H  D 


UC-NRLF 


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THE  PUBLIC 
REFUSES  TO    PAY 

EDITORIALS 

FROM  THE  BOSTON  HERALD 

ON  THE  RAILROAD  AND 

BUILDING  SITUATION 


BY 
F.  LAURISTON  BULLARD 


PRICE  SO  CENTS 


ARSHALL  JONES  COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 
212  SUMMER  STREET,  BOSTON 


THE  PtTBLIC 
REFUSES   TO    PAY 

EDITORIALS 

FROM  THE  BOSTON  HERALD 

ON  THE  RAILROAD  AND 

BUILDING  SITUATION 


BY 
F.  LAURISTON  BULLARD 


MARSHALL  JONES  COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 
212  SUMMER  STREET,  BOSTON 


COPYRIGHT,  1921,  BY 
MARSHALL    JONES    COMPANY 


PRINTED    IN    THE 
UNITED    STATES    OF    AMERICA 


CONTENTS 

HOW  THE  BUILDING  TRADES  UNIONS  WORK 
AGAINST  THE  PUBLIC  WELFARE 

INTRODUCTORY  STATEMENT  PAGE 
Some  Things  You  Pay  for  when  You  Build      4 

Some  Lessons  in  the  Boosting  Art      ...  8 

Why  Labor  "Plays  "for  Overtime     ...  13 
A  Machine  Tammany  Might  Envy    .      .      .17 

"Notoriously  Inefficient" 22 

But— It's  All"  Under  the  Rules"      ...  28 

What  the   Chamber  of   Commerce   Found  32 
Nothing  is  Done  "Right"  Until  a  Union 

Man  Does  It 38 

HOW  THE  RAILWAY  LABOR  UNIONS  WORK 
AGAINST  THE  PUBLIC  WELFARE 

Some  Things  the  Railroads  Are  Up  Against  44 

Six  Men  for  a  Two-Man  Job         ....  48 

"Ridiculous"— William  H.  Taft  .      ...  52 

Two  Years  to  Figure  Out  the  Back  Pay  57 
Why  the   New   Hampshire   Public   Service 

Commission  Said  "Yes"  to  the  B.  &  M.  62 
No  Wonder  Railroads  Do  Not  Pay  Ex- 
penses      67 

Wages  Are  One  Thing;    Earnings  Another  70 

"McAdoo  Mechanics" 76 

How  the  Glue  Boy  Became  an  Upholsterer  81 

LABOR'S  FIRST  DUTY  86 


Introductory  Statement 


A  HESE  editorials  represent  no  "campaign."  They 
are  not  "inspired"  by  any  individual  or  organization. 
They  are  not  propaganda  in  behalf  of  any  "cause."  No 
one  "approached"  the  Herald  and  asked  that  they  be 
"run."  Their  sole  purpose  is  to  tell  the  public  something 
it  ought  to  know  and  has  a  right  to  know.  Quite  casually 
the  one  series  started  and  equally  without  premeditation 
the  other  series  followed,  but  the  response  of  the  public 
was  so  prompt  and  the  interest  of  the  public  so  keen  that 
the  Herald  soon  realized  it  was  getting  "near"  its  readers 
and  that  it  was  rendering  a  valuable  public  service. 

The  circumstances  that  occasioned  the  first  building 
editorials  were  these:  The  Herald  learned  that  about 
half  a  hundred  building  projects,  many  of  them  of  the 
first  magnitude,  most  of  them  fully  planned  and  some  of 
them  actually  begun,  were  to  be  held  up  "until  conditions 
improve."  This  looked  like  news  and  the  paper  undertook 
to  ascertain  what  these  "conditions"  were.  Inquiry 
developed  these  facts —  That  buildings  in  Boston  are 
erected  upon  terms  agreed  to  by  the  Building  Trades 
Employers'  Association,  said  to  control  nine-tenths  of  the 
building  contracts,  and  the  United  Building  Trades  Coun- 
cil, claiming  to  represent  nearly  all  the  workmen  having 
to  do  with  building  operations;  that  the  last  agreement 
between  these  parties  carrying  a  basic  wage  scale  of  $1 
an  hour  had  expired  on  the  last  day  of  1920;  that  while 
committees  were  in  conference  upon  the  terms  of  a  new 
agreement  the  plasterers  went  on  strike  for  an  advance 
to  $1.50  an  hour;  and  that  before  the  termination  of  the 


572520 


STATEMENT 

old  agreement  the  employers  had  offered  to  sign  a  new 
one  founded  upon  the  continuance  of  the  old  $l-an-hour 
basic  wage.  Obviously  if  the  plasterers  got  a  50  per  cent 
advance  other  trades  would  have  to  be  advanced.  And 
the  process  of  deflation  from  war  levels  was  well  under 
way.  Wages  in  general  were  coming  down. 

At  once  the  Herald  investigator  found  that  the  Unions 
had  perfected  an  organization  which  gave  them  almost 
arbitrary  power  and  that  as  a  practical  autocracy  they 
were  levying  unjust  charges  upon  the  public.  Therefore 
the  editorials.  The  articles  were  not  intended  to  deal  so 
much  with  the  question  of  what  the  basic  wage  ought  to 
be,  but  rather  with  that  great  barbed  wire  entanglement 
known  as  the  "working  rules"  of  the  27  Unions  of  the 
building  industry.  And  these  articles  have  been  widely 
read  and  commented  upon  because  this  seems  to  be  almost 
the  first  time  a  newspaper  has  cited  actual  cases  that 
illustrate  how  those  rules  operate.  While  the  series  was 
in  course  of  publication  the  strike  came  on.  Their  first 
offer  rejected,  the  employers  proposed  a  cut  to  90  cents 
an  hour  as  a  basic  wage,  together  with  the  abolition  of 
union  foremen,  the  reduction  of  overtime  from  double- 
time  pay  to  a  time-and-a-half  rate,  and  the  increase  from 
40  hours  to  44  hours  of  the  week  of  the  five  trades  that 
now  do  no  work  on  Saturdays.  At  this  writing  the  strike 
is  still  unsettled. 

As  to  the  railway  editorials:  The  railroads  have  been 
"in  the  news"  constantly  for  many  months.  The  public 
has  known  that  the  managements  were  seeking  concessions 
from  the  Labor  Board  at  Chicago.  Then  the  Herald 
stumbled  upon  the  fact  that  a  New  England  road  is 
paying  today  for  the  guarding  of  an  ordinary  country 
crossing  almost  three  times  what  it  paid  before  government 
operation.  Through  that  small  portal  the  Herald  in- 
vestigator began  his  quest  for  detailed  information  upon 
the  conditions  under  which  the  railway  men  work  today. 


THE  PUBLIC  REFUSES  TO  PAY       3 

He  pored  over  the  pages  of  the  bulky  official  publications 
containing  rules,  supplements,  addenda,  interpretations, 
decisions,  that  govern  the  way  railway  labor  today  must 
be  performed  and  the  rates  at  which  it  must  be  paid. 
Private  ownership  had  inherited  from  Federal  control  a 
bewildering  maze  of  regulations.  The  Herald  accumu- 
lated a  mass  of  illustrative  material  and  spread  it  before 
the  public  in  its  editorial  columns. 

These  articles  are  reprinted  here  precisely  as  they 
appeared  in  the  paper  except  for  a  small  amount  of  con- 
densation and  some  omissions  to  prevent  duplication. 
The  cases  cited  are  believed  all  to  be  authentic.  Only 
one  is  left  out  and  that  because  when  it  was  used  in  the 
Herald  opinions  differed  as  to  its  accuracy. 

And  please  notice:  In  our  opinion  the  great  majority 
of  labor  union  members  are  as  public-spirited  and  patriotic, 
as  fair-minded  and  conscientious,  as  any  other  class  of 
men.  But  they  themselves  are  enmeshed  in  the  rules  and 
regulations  their  leaders  have  woven  together  into  a 
fabric  that  tends  to  become  a  straight  jacket,  limiting  their 
freedom  of  action,  hobbling  the  ambitious,  hampering 
those  who  develop  unusual  skill,  leveling  all  down  to  the 
dead  level  of  the  least  competent.  The  writer  of  these 
articles  has  nothing  but  good  will  for  every  man  who  toils. 
He  would  like  to  see  labor  emancipated  from  the  restric- 
tions that  prevent  each  man  from  making  the  most  of  his 
natural  endowments. 

What  ought  membership  in  a  labor  union  to  guarantee? 
It  ought  to  be  a  stamp  of  quality,  a  "union  label"  in 
another  than  the  usual  sense.  It  ought  to  be  a  pledge  to 
the  public  of  ability,  efficiency,  fidelity.  But  is  it?  Does 
union  membership  guarantee  these  things?  It  does  not. 
The  public  knows  it  does  not.  And  for  that  reason  the 
public  no  longer  tends  spontaneously  to  take  the  labor 
side  in  any  time  of  industrial  trouble. 

F.  LAURISTON  BULLARD. 


THE  PUBLIC  REFUSES  TO  PAT 

SOME   THINGS   YOU  PAY  FOR  WHEN 
YOU  BUILD 

OU  intend  to  make  an  investment  in  a  new  building, 
an  apartment  house,  a  residence,  a  business  block.  You 
have  your  plans  and  your  contractor.  Operations  are 
starting.  At  once  your  contractor  runs  into  the  midst  of 
a  most  complicated  system  of  barbed  wire  entanglements. 
He  cannot  escape  them;  they  are  staked  down  and  held 
in  place  by  the  immutable  rules  of  the  trades  unions. 
Unless  the  contractor  keeps  within  their  bounds  he  will 
have  a  strike  on  hand.  They  hinder  his  freedom  of  action, 
determine  his  choice  of  helpers,  greatly  increase  the  cost 
of  his  product.  Here  is  the  way  these  results  are  brought 
about: 

All  the  foremen  on  the  job  must  be  union  men.  The 
plasterers,  the  carpenters,  the  plumbers,  the  brick  masons, 
each  trade  will  have  one  or  more  foremen,  depending  on 
the  size  of  the  bualding.  Each  foreman  will  be  assisted 
probably  by  several  sub-foremen.  Your  contractor  may 
not  choose  for  a  foreman  the  man  he  thinks  the  ablest  and 
fairest  for  the  job,  altogether  aside  from  all  other  considera- 
tions. He  must  choose  a  man  who  has  a  union  card. 
Once  on  duty,  supervising  the  work  of  the  individual 
workers  in  his  craft,  this  foreman  is  confronted  with  the 
necessity  of  satisfying  these  union  men  that  he  is  carefully 
watchful  of  their  rights  and  interests  under  their  rules. 
If  they  become  dissatisfied  with  him  as  a  foreman  they 
may  bring  charges  against  him.  He  then  will  be  brought 
before  the  union  for  trial,  and  if  the  union  takes  away  his 
union  card  that  action  automatically  expels  him  from 
both  the  union  and  the  job.  Your  contractor  then  must 
select  another  union  man  for  foreman. 

It  follows  naturally  that  these  foremen  are  seldom  ^if 
ever  genuine  directors  of  work,  regarding  impartially  the 


THE  PUBLIC  REFUSES  TO  PAY       5 

just  rights  of  both  the  workers  and  their  employer,  who 
also  is  his  employer,  the  men  who  get  the  wages  and  the 
man  who  foots  the  bills.  In  effect  these  foremen  become 
go-betweens,  mere  errand  boys,  their  efficiency  enor- 
mously decreased  by  the  punitive  relation  which  their 
own  subordinates  hold  to  them  by  virtue  of  their  member- 
ship in  the  union.  Codes  of  ethics  may  vary  in  different 
trades,  but  essentially  these  conditions  are  the  same  in  all. 

Moreover,  a  close  study  of  the  rules  the  unions  impose 
upon  these  foremen  disclose  some  very  remarkable  re- 
strictions. For  instance,  Article  9  in  the  Agreement  of 
the  Plumbers'  Union  reads  thus: 

"It  shall  be  the  duty  of  all  foremen  to  report  any  man 
late  on  the  job  to  his  employer  at  the  time  it  occurs." 

The  rule  reads  all  right.  The  man  ought  to  be  reported. 
But — that  rule  has  been  interpreted  to  mean  that  the 
foreman  cannot  report  the  workman  for  anything  else. 
The  only  thing  he  can  report  is  tardiness. 

And  one  in  a  position  to  know  declares  that  in  the 
Painters'  and  Decorators'  Union  a  foreman  on  a  job  is  re- 
stricted from  comment  as  to  whether  a  man  is  doing  a 
proper  or  an  improper  amount  of  work. 

Again — the  contractor,  and  back  of  him  the  owners  of 
the  new  construction,  will  be  up  against  an  artificial 
limitation  in  the  supply  of  skilled  labor.  It  is  a  serious 
fact  that  organized  attempts  have  been  made  to  limit  the 
number  of  new  men  coming  into  several  crafts,  thus  lessen- 
ing the  supply  of  labor  in  that  field  and  increasing  the 
price  the  public  must  pay  for  the  labor  that  is  available. 
Here  are  the  facts  as  to  the  restrictions  imposed  in  one 
or  two  trades : 

In  the  case  of  the  plasterers:  No  matter  how  many  men 
may  be  employed  in  any  one  shop  no  more  than  three 
apprentices  may  learn  the  trade  in  that  shop.  A  small 
shop  with  three  or  four  men  may  have  one  or  two  or  three 
apprentices;  so  may  a  big  shop  with  forty  or|fifty  men, 


6       THE  PUBLIC  REFUSES  TO  PAT 

but  it  may  not  have  more  than  three.  During  1920  the 
employers  voluntarily  increased  their  wages  more  than 
50  per  cent  and  for  the  first  year  more  than  doubled  the 
apprentice  wage,  in  order  to  encourage  American  youths 
to  learn  this  craft.  But  the  results  were  very  discouraging, 
for  the  local  union  is  understood  to  have  diluted  the  ardor 
of  nearly  all  applicants. 

Here  is  the  rule  in  Article  14  of  the  local  Plumbers' 
Union:  "It  is  expressly  understood  that  no  employer 
will  be  entitled  to  more  than  two  (2)  apprentices."  Let  us 
see  how  that  rule  works  out: 

A  certain  plumber's  shop  in  this  city  has  ordinarily  from 
twenty-eight  to  thirty  men  at  work.  The  shop  has  two 
apprentices  and  can  have  no  more.  Each  of  these  appren- 
tices may  be  sent  out  to  assist  upon  a  single  job.  When 
a  third  order  is  to  be  filled  what  shall  the  employer  do? 
He  is  not  permitted  to  use  helpers.  He  does  the  only 
thing  he  can  do — he  sends  two  plumbers.  Often  he  has 
men  scattered  about  on  eight  or  ten  different  jobs.  In  all 
but  two  cases  no  apprentices  will  be  serving  as  unskilled 
assistants  on  these  jobs. 

The  plumber  screws  a  long  pipe  into  place;  a  second 
plumber  acting  as  helper,  holds  level  the  far  end  of  the 
pipe — a  task  any  boy  might  do.  Both  plumbers  get  the 
regulation  $1  an  hour.  The  plumber  runs  a  long  piece 
of  pipe  down  through  the  flashing  on  a  roof;  a  second 
plumber  goes  to  the  floor  below  and  supports  the  pipe. 
The  plumber  wants  an  extra  tool;  the  second  plumber 
goes  to  the  main  floor  and  gets  it.  The  plumber  wants  a 
small  fitting  carried  through  the  building,  and  plumber 
No.  2,  serving  as  general  assistant,  carries  it.  And  both 
men  receive  the  full  rate  per  hour.  In  the  plumbing  trade 
the  assistance  of  an  ordinary  helper  is  constantly  required. 
But  such  helpers  cannot  be  obtained,  once  the  two  ap- 
prentices allowed  a  shop  have  been  assigned  to  jobs. 

The  matter  of  apprentices  in  the  Brickmasons'  Union 


T  HE     PUBLIC     REFUSES     TO     PAY  7 

has  been  brought  up  at  the  Chamber  of  Commerce  hear- 
ings. The  bricklayers  charged  that  the  contractors  will 
not  employ  apprentices.  The  contractors  vigorously 
deny  this,  and  declare  that  in  the  Brickmasons'  Union  no 
one  can  be  entered  as  an  apprentice  unless  he  be  a  son  of  a 
member  of  that  union.  This  is  said  to  be  true  also  of  some 
other  unions. 

Once  more:  The  builder  often  has  to  contend  with  the 
union  rules  as  to  travel  and  the  time  for  reporting  for 
duty.  The  plasterers  have  a  provision  in  their  agreement 
which  requires  them  when  traveling  to  and  from  work 
out  of  town  to  take  the  train  nearest  eight  in  the  morning 
and  nearest  five  in  the  evening.  In  one  actual  case  that 
rule  worked  this  way:  Distance  to  travel  about  twenty 
miles.  Morning  trains  available:  an  express  at  7:10  and  a 
local  at  7:35.  The  local  was  chosen  "under  the  rules," 
arriving  at  about  8:17,  and  making  it  possible  to  start 
work  about  nine.  Quitting  time  for  return  was  fixed  at 
4:30.  Evening  trains  available:  a  local  at  4:40,  an 
express  at  3:55.  A  way  was  found  for  the  express  to  be 
taken  "under  the  rules."  It  arrived  one  minute  nearer 
five  than  the  other  train.  The  builder,  of  course,  was 
paying  the  traveling  expenses  of  these  workers.  If  it  had 
required  more  than  an  hour  to  reach  the  job  then  the 
worker  would  have  been  paid  for  his  travel  time  at  the 
regular  scale  rates  per  hour. 

So  many  are  the  rules  in  these  trade  union  agreements, 
so  perplexing  is  their  application,  that  many  a  builder  has 
despaired  of  understanding  them.  Many  public-spirited 
men  declare  that,  altogether  aside  from  the  general  prin- 
ciple of  collective  bargaining  and  the  stabilizing  influence 
that  results  from  definite  pledges  as  to  rates  of  wages  and 
hours  of  work,  such  rules  as  these  penalize  the  public, 
boost  the  cost  of  building,  and  injure  the  workers  them- 
selves. Anyhow,  it  is  well  for  the  public  that  has  to  pay 
the  bills  to  see  where  some  of  its  money  goes.  No  one 


8       THE  PUBLIC  REFUSES  TO  PAY 

knows  absolutely  how  much  could  be  saved  in  the  cost  of 
building  if  contractors  were  allowed  to  manage  for  them- 
selves. But  those  best  qualified  to  form  opinions  are  in 
general  agreement  that  without  these  rules,  these  wire 
entanglements — and  without  any  reference  to  wages  and 
hours — the  cost  of  erecting  a  building  could  be  decreased 
one-fourth.  That  is  enough  to  make  all  the  difference 
between  a  decision  to  build  and  a  decision  not  to  build. 
One  dollar  in  every  four  is  a  considerable  saving. 

SOME  LESSONS  IN   THE  BOOSTING  ART 

ANYBODY  who  can  crank  a  Ford  car  can  operate  a 
gasoline  diaphragm  pump.  Any  man  looking  for  a  snap 
is  recommended  to  try  for  a  pump  job.  If  he  lands  one 
he  will  have  to  start  the  pump  in  the  morning  and  stop  it 
at  night,  and  occasionally  put  a  little  oil  on  the  places 
where  the  wear  comes.  Not  many  years  ago  the  boy  who 
carried  water  to  the  workmen  on  a  building  job  would  run 
half  a  dozen  such  pumps.  Nowadays  an  engineer  runs  a 
single  pump  and  gets  $10  a  day  for  starting  it,  stopping  it, 
and  pouring  on  the  oil.  Each  day  he  has  several  hours  to 
read  the  papers,  smoke  and  chat — and  consume  his  noon- 
day meal.  But  the  meal  time  is  also  pay  time. 

In  one  actual  case  after  the  operator  had  drawn  his  first 
week's  pay  the  business  agent  of  the  Hoisting  and  Portable 
Engineers'  Union  wanted  to  know  about  "that  $2  short- 
age. That  man  only  got  $8.  He's  $2  shy  on  the  noon 
hour."  The  employer  replied:  "Why,  the  man  does 
nothing  the  noon  hour."  The  agent  came  back  with, 
"Well,  doesn't  the  pump  keep  on  and  isn't  he  responsible?  " 
"\ye — ik"  Said  the  employer,  "that's  only  an  hour,  so  he's 
only  entitled  to  $1."  "No,  sir,"  came  the  reply;  "that's 
overtime  and  must  be  paid  for  as  double  time." 

It's  all  under  the  rules  and  perfectly  simple.  The  man 
who  runs  the  pump  must  get  the  rate  if  he  is  classified  as 


THE  PUBLIC  REFUSES  TO  PAT       9 

an  engineer.  The  rules  so  classify  him.  Rule  36  of  this 
union  reads:  "We  claim  hoisting  and  portable  engines 
and  boilers  on  buildings  and  construction  work  where 
operated  by  steam,  electricity,  gasoline  or  compressed  air, 
including  pumps,  siphons,  pulsometers,  concrete  mixers, 
stone  crushers,  air  compressors  and  elevators,  where  used 
for  hoisting  material,  street  rollers,  steam  shovels,  cable- 
ways,  orange-peel,  clam-shell  buckets,  pile  drivers,  Dinkey 
Locomotives  or  any  other  machine  used,  irrespective  of  its 
motive  power."  The  rule  obviously  intends  to  leave 
nothing  out.  "Any  other  machine"  is  a  blanket  phrase. 

A  great  new  building  has  been  in  process  of  erection  in 
the  Back  Bay.  It  became  necessary  to  get  rid  of  the  sur- 
face water  that  flowed  into  the  excavation.  To  do  this 
draining  the  builders  installed  an  automatic  electrically 
driven  pump.  A  floating  control  started  and  stopped  the 
pump  as  conditions  made  necessary.  The  entire  appara- 
tus was  placed  in  a  wooden  shack  under  lock  and  key. 
Aside  from  occasionally  oiling  the  motor  the  machine  re- 
quired no  attention  whatever.  The  union,  nevertheless, 
under  the  rules  declared  that  the  pump  must  have  the 
constant  attention  of  an  engineer. 

For  the  time  thus  "worked"  the  builder  of  that  struc- 
ture had  to  pay  by  that  interpretation  $168  a  week. 

Some  time  ago  a  hoisting  engine  needed  repairs.  The 
employer  asked  the  regular  engineer  to  do  the  work  on  a 
Saturday  afternoon  and  the  following  Sunday.  The  en- 
gineer refused.  The  employer  obtained  other  men  for  the 
job.  And  the  union  compelled  the  employer  to  pay  the 
engineer  double  time  for  the  period  covered  by  the  outside 
machinists.  For — the  rules  again — the  work  "belongs" 
to  the  union  employee.  He  may  decline  to  do  it,  but  if 
any  one  else  does  it  the  employee  collects,  just  the  same. 
By  the  rules  of  nearly  all  the  unions,  in  such  cases  of 
absence  payment  must  be  made  to  the  regular  union  man 
to  whom  the  work  "belongs." 


10  T  H|E     PUBLIC     REFUSES     TO     PAY 

On  a  Saturday  lately,  some  union  iron  workers  placed 
some  reenforcing  steel  strips  in  position  for  some  concrete 
work  on  a  big  structure.  The  concreters  did  their  job 
next  day  and  found  they  had  to  change  the  position  of 
some  of  these  steel  bars — an  easy  task.  Laborers  made 
the  shifts.  The  iron  workers,  who  had  not  been  on  the 
job  at  all,  collected  double  time  for  that  Sunday. 

Brickmasons  today  are  paid  about  twice  what  they 
formerly  received.  But  the  owner  pays  ten  times  as 
much  for  his  walls.  Thus: 

Not  many  years  ago  a  good  brickmason  laid  2,000  bricks 
a  day.  The  union  now  customarily  limits  him  to  500. 
The  reduced  output  per  man  made  it  necessary  to  use 
more  men  to  get  the  same  amount  of  work  done.  The 
artificial  limitation  in  the  number  of  brickmasons,  pro- 
duced by  methods  recently  explained  in  the  Herald,  puts 
a  premium  on  the  available  supply.  The  established 
union  wage  is  $1  an  hour.  But  last  year,  when  it  was 
almost  impossible  to  get  men,  employers  bid  against  each 
other  for  emergency  forces,  and  the  rate  per  hour  went  up 
to  $1.25  even  to  $1.35.  Therefore  the  owner  who  paid 
$1.35  an  hour  to  get  his  walls  up  would  pay  each  man 
$10.80  for  an  8-hour  day.  As  the  mason  laid  only  500 
bricks  it  would  take  two  days'  time,  or  $21.60,  to  get  1,000 
bricks  into  the  wall,  to  say  nothing  of  the  cost  of  the 
helpers  and  the  materials.  The  owner  used  to  pay  $2  a 
thousand  to  get  his  walls  and  now  pays  more  than  $20. 
At  the  Chamber  of  Commerce  hearings,  a  witness  showed 
that  the  mason  who  picks  up  a  brick  and  places  it  in  a  wall 
is  paid  as  much  as  the  brick  manufacturer  receives  for 
producing  the  brick — for  excavating  the  clay,  moulding 
and  burning  it,  handling  and  storing  the  brick,  and  all  the 
risks  and  charges  of  doing  business. 

The  union  painter  these  days  must  use  a  brush  of  union 
dimensions.  The  narrower  a  brush  the  longer  it  takes  to 
cover  a  surface,  or  the  more  men  must  be  put  on  a  hurry 


THE  PUBLIC  REFUSES  TO  PAY      11 


job.  So  the  union  decrees  that  no  brush  more  than 
inches  wide  shall  be  handled  by  any  member  of  the  union  — 
which  is  only  an  indirect  way  of  limiting  output.  Also 
the  union  rules  say  that  no  paint-spraying  machine  shall 
be  used  on  a  union  job.  Sprayers  save  time,  so  the  union 
prefers  to  have  painters  do  the  work  with  brushes  of  pre- 
scribed dimensions.  Not  long  ago  in  this  city  an  em- 
ployer began  on  a  rush  order  to  whiten  some  big  walls  with 
a  sprayer.  The  union's  watchman  came  in  a  hurry  with 
his  ultimatum:  "Stop  the  machine  or  I  order  off  the  men." 
Today  these  sprayers  —  very  useful  for  saving  time  and 
money  on  any  surface  needing  only  a  plain  and  protective 
covering  —  may  not  be  used  on  any  union  job. 

The  lathers,  just  when  the  present  strike  started,  had  in 
view  a  limitation  of  the  amount  of  work  to  be  done  in  a 
day.  Sixteen  bundles  is  not  a  maximum,  but  it  has  been 
the  average  under  union  conditions.  When  the  strike 
came,  the  lathers  had  pending  a  demand  for  twelve 
bundles  a  day,  a  reduction  of  one-fourth  in  output. 

Other  suggestive  illustrations  of  union  conditions  are 
easy  to  cite.  A  deck  hand  on  a  lighter  or  pile  driver  in  use 
in  wharf  building  may  do  nothing  whatever  but  watch  an 
anchor  rope,  but  he  must  be  a  member  of  the  Wharf  Car- 
penters' Union  and  be  paid,  not  as  a  deck  hand,  but  a 
wharf  carpenter.  Concrete,  of  course,  is  poured  into 
wooden  forms  and  the  forms  are  later  stripped  away. 
Any  laborer  could  take  the  planking  down,  but  under  the 
rules  a  union  carpenter  must  do  it,  and  he  gets  the  pay 
not  of  a  laborer  but  of  a  carpenter.  Once  the  materials 
used  in  the  work  of  a  plumber  have  reached  the  first  floor 
of  a  building  only  a  plumber  may  handle  them.  Plain 
labor  may  unload  them  from  car  or  truck  and  deliver  them 
on  the  first  floor,  but  then  only  a  highly-paid  craftsman 
may  touch  them. 

Further:  On  a  big  Boston  job,  a  man  on  a  concrete 
mixer  and  another  on  a  derrick  sat  idle  and  a  man  on  a 


12     THE  PUBLIC  REFUSES  TO  PAT 

pump  had  little  to  do.  The  employer  needed  a  man  two 
hours  for  a  second  mixer.  He  tried  to  switch  one  of  the 
idle  men.  He  could  not  do  so  without  fracturing  a  rule. 
If  a  man  had  shifted  he  could  not  have  gone  back  to  his 
first  job.  Violation  of  the  rule  would  have  cost  him  $5. 
So  the  employer  had  to  order  a  fourth  man  from  the  union. 
He  came,  worked  two  hours,  and  got  a  half-day's  pay. 
If  an  employer  fires  an  engineer  he  cannot  employ  another 
without  an  O.  K.  from  the  union's  business  agent,  who  in 
turn  must  have  time  to  see  if  he  shall  order  the  first  man 
back  on  the  job  as  "wrongfully  discharged." 

According  to  the  rules,  no  one  may  lift  a  pump  out  of  a 
hole  and  drop  it  into  another  hole  unless  he  be  an  iron 
worker.  This  is  classified  as  "rigging"  work,  and  with  the 
classification  comes  the  difference  in  pay.  The  various 
rules  applying  in  such  matters  are  so  made  that  when  on  a 
Boston  job  the  pumps  known  as  pulsometers  were  used  to 
remove  water  from  the  excavations,  and  these  pumps 
had  often  to  be  relocated,  actually  every  time  a  pump  was 
moved  it  required  the  services  of  two  steamfitters,  two 
plumbers,  three  iron  workers  and  one  engineer,  while 
that  engineer  and  a  handy  laborer  could  have  done  it  as 
well  and  much  faster. 

Matters  of  this  kind  come  under  the  head  of  "jurisdic- 
tional  requirements,"  and  these  jurisdictional  questions 
are  an  expensive  feature  of  the  present  building  system. 
More  than  20  unions  have  to  do  with  buildings.  Dis- 
putes often  arise  between  them  as  to  which  under  the 
rules  has  the  right  to  do  a  certain  piece  of  work.  So  both 
the  carpenter  and  the  iron  worker  claim  the  right  to  set 
steel  sash  and  door  frames.  Both  the  iron  worker  and  the 
steamfitter  claim  the  installation  of  pipe  railings.  Both 
the  metal  lather  and  the  iron  worker  claim  the  placing  of 
reenforcing  rods.  And  the  employer  must  mind  his  step 
or  find  himself  in  trouble. 

And,  by  the  way,  when  trouble  does  come  with  any 


THE  PUBLIC  REFUSES  TO  PAT     18 

craft,  adjustment  tends  to  be  a  matter  for  the  decision  of 
one  party  and  not  of  both  parties.  For  instance,  the  rule 
in  one  craft  reads : 

"In  case  of  misunderstanding  between  engineer  and 
employer  in  regard  to  wages  or  conditions,  engineer  shall 
refer  matter  to  business  agent,  whose  decision  shall  be 
binding  till  next  meeting  of  union." 

That  is,  the  arbitrator  must  be  a  union  man,  and  the 
only  authority  over  him  is  the  union  itself.  The  em- 
ployer's only  function  is  to  accept  decisions.  The  owner's 
only  obligation  is  to  pay  the  bills.  And,  of  course,  at  the 
last  the  public  pays  the  bills, — the  man  who  buys  the 
house,  the  family  that  rents  the  apartment,  the  firm  that 
leases  the  office,  the  business  that  uses  the  building,  the 
consumer  who  buys^the  goods  sold  in  that  building.  The 
cases  here  cited  are  not  isolated,  they  are  representative. 
Everybody  believes  real  work  should  have  real  pay.  But 
rules  like  these  are  bound  to  penalize  the  public  and  in  the 
end  to  damage  the  whole  labor  cause. 


WHY  LABOR  "PLAYS"  FOR  OVERTIME 


As 


an  indoor  sport  running  an  electric  converter  beats 
watching  the  stock  market  to  a  standstill.  Anybody 
who  has  a  rudimentary  knowledge  of  electrical  apparatus 
can  start  a  converter  and  once  he  throws  the  switch  all  he 
has  to  do  is  to  sit  by  hour  after  hour  while  the  machine 
operates  itself.  The  job  requires  no  exertion,  risk,  or  in- 
vestment. But  it  does  pay  dividends. 

The  two  men  on  that  job  on  a  recent  piece  of  building 
construction  in  this  city  collected  between  them  $280  a 
week — $112  for  the  day  man  and  $168  for  the  night  man. 
Other  workers  wanted  a  chance  at  that  machine.  They 
accused  their  bosses  of  favoritism  when  they  were  not 
put  on.  Envious  eyes  watched  the  man  who  "drew 
down"  $16  a  day  for  the  day  shift  and  the  other  who 


14      THE  PUBLIC  REFUSES  TO  PAY 

"pulled"  $24  for  the  night  shift  on  that  converter.  All 
the  two  had  to  do  was  to  switch  on  the  juice,  smoke  and 
gossip  through  their  shifts  and  collect  their  pay.  The 
machine  gave  a  continuous  performance  and  the  elec- 
tricians occasionally  lubricated  it  with  a  little  oil. 

The  man  who  had  to  pay  the  bills  took  the  matter  up 
with  the  Electricians'  Union.  The  officials  assured  him 
all  was  regular  and  correct  "under  the  rules."  The  men 
merely  were  getting  their  dues.  It  figured  out  this  way: 

The  rate  of  pay  in  the  building-  trades  is  $1  an  hour  and 
double  pay  for  overtime.  A  day  is  eight  hours.  The 
Electrician's  Union  makes  overtime  of  all  night  work. 
The  man  on  the  12-hour  day  shift  therefore  collected  $8 
for  eight  regular  hours  and  $8  for  four  overtime  hours, 
making  $16  a  day,  or  $112  for  the  seven-day  week.  The 
man  on  the  night  turn  collected  the  double  rate  of  $2  an 
hour  for  the  entire  twelve  hours  of  his  shift,  making  $24 
a  day,  or  $168  a  week.  To  be  sure  three  men  might  have 
been  put  on  the  apparatus  hi  shifts  of  eight  hours  each, 
but  the  owner  would  have  saved  no  money  thereby.  So 
he  saved  one  man  for  other  work  and  two  men  very 
cheerfully  gave  twelve  hours  a  day  to  the  job. 

In  nearly  all  the  twenty-seven  building  trades  unions 
the  double  time  for  overtime  rule  produces  results  almost 
as  ridiculous.  The  workers  like  the  overtime  income  and 
"play"  for  it.  In  the  cement  craft,  for  instance: 

The  employers  tried  some  time  ago  to  use  what  are 
called  "accelerators"  to  "hurry  the  setting"  of  a  mortar 
surface  so  that  it  might  not  be  necessary  to  go  over  regular 
hours  to  complete  the  work  of  the  day.  The  local  Cement 
Finishers'  Union  decided,  however,  that  they  wanted  the 
overtime  and  refused  to  use  the  accelerators,  and  they 
are  not  used  today  in  this  city.  In  placing  a  cement 
finish  the  men  spread  and  level  off  the  mortar  surfacing  in 
the  early  part  of  the  day.  They  then  must  wait  until 
the  mortar  "sets,"  gets  solid  and  stiff  enough  for  the  final 


THE  PUBLIC  REFUSES  TO  PAT      15 

troweling  later  in  the  day.  Usually  the  mortar  last 
spread  cannot  be  troweled  until  the  final  hours  of  the 
afternoon  and  often  a  large  amount  of  overtime  is  neces- 
sary to  complete  the  work  that  must  be  done  ere  the  job 
can  be  left.  Obviously  efficiency  and  economy  demanded 
that  a  way  be  found  to  "hurry  the  set."  But  when  in- 
gredients were  added  that  did  shorten  the  waiting  time  and 
keep  the  final  troweling  within  the  regular  hours  the  unions 
decided  the  men  must  have  the  overtime  and  outlawed 
the  use  of  the  accelerator. 

The  manufacturer  of  one  of  these  accelerators  testified 
at  the  Chamber  of  Commerce  hearings  that  the  union's 
refusal  to  permit  its  use  had  driven  him  out  of  business. 
He  had  a  lot  of  contractors  among  his  clients.  They  had 
to  notify  him  that  they  could  not  use  his  product,  and  he 
had  to  turn  his  attention  to  other  lines  of  business. 

The  unions  want  the  overtime  rate  because  they  know 
how  much  overtime  work  there  is  bound  to  be  in  the 
building  business.  In  many  trades  overtime  cannot  be 
avoided  without  damaging  consequences.  A  machine 
breaks  while  concrete  walls  are  being  placed;  the  delay 
means  overtime  unless  the  contractor  struggles  along  to 
avoid  the  penalty  charge.  Work  frequently  must  be 
carried  on  to  a  certain  point  before  it  can  be  left  for  the 
night.  Sometimes  an  amount  of  preparatory  work  is 
necessary  after  hours  in  order  to  get  a  good  start  next 
morning.  To  prevent  interruption  of  the  day's  operations 
machinery  often  has  to  be  repaired  out-of-hours.  These 
and  other  factors  add  up  into  heavy  sums  for  overtime, 
and  the  employers  would  like  to  reduce  the  penalty  of  $2 
for  what  normally  costs  $1  because  it  increases  enor- 
mously the  total  cost  of  construction,  a  cost  that  the 
owners,  of  course,  pass  on  to  the  public. 

The  workmen  are  keenly  alive  to  the  "advantages" 
of  overtime.  In  1918  the  wage  per  hour  in  the  building 
trades  was  75  cents,  not,  as  later,  $1,  but  the  doubling  for 


16  THE     PUBLIC     REFUSES     TO     PAT 

overtime  existed  then  as  now.  And  carpenters  who  were 
getting  $6  a  day  told  their  employers  they  could  not 
afford  to  stay  on  the  job,  because  they  could  go  across 
town  to  a  government  job  where  overtime  was  plentiful 
and  work  two  hours  more,  making  their  income  $9  a  day. 
Today  such  a  swap  would  mean  $12  instead  of  $8.  A 
machine  runs  through  meal  time,  and  the  workers  collect 
overtime  pay  for  an  extra  hour.  Outsiders  do  on  Satur- 
day what  the  union  men  will  not  do  and  the  unionists 
claim  wages  at  overtime  rates  on  all  the  outsiders  have 
done.  The  overtime  charge  enters  into  every  phase  of 
the  building  business. 

Today  five  of  the  twenty-seven  unions  are  organized  on 
a  five-day  week  basis — the  carpenters,  plasterers,  lathers, 
painters  and  tile  workers — besides  one  helpers'  union  of 
semi-skilled  workers.  The  tendency  is  toward  the  or- 
ganization of  the  entire  industry  on  this  40-hour  week 
basis.  This  means  inevitably  still  more  overtime  work 
at  punitive  rates.  As  things  now  are,  the  fact  that 
twenty-two  trades  work  on  Saturday  forenoon  means  that 
to  prevent  interruption  in  necessary  building  processes 
some  of  the  five-day  tradesmen  will  have  to  be  used. 
They  work  side  by  side  with  six-day  tradesmen  and  get 
twice  their  pay  for  that  extra  half-day. 

This  overtime  labor  became  general  during  the  war. 
Efforts  to  reduce  to  the  eight-hour  day  caused  dissatis- 
faction to  labor  in  general  and  frequent  strikes  on  govern- 
ment work.  The  men  protested  against  "cutting  down 
their  pay."  They  were  ready  enough  to  work  more  than 
eight  hours  if  the  extra  time  brought  them  a  bonus. 
Labor  leaders  always  argue  that  the  overtime  charge  is 
intended  solely  to  prevent  employers  from  exacting  an 
excessive  amount  of  work  per  day  from  their  employers, 
with  destructive  effects  upon  their  mental  and  physical 
welfare. 

But  it  seems  undeniable  that  many  times  rules  are 


THE  PUBLIC  REFUSES  TO  PAY      17 

framed  and  conditions  arranged  for  the  express  purpose 
of  getting  access  to  overtime  pay.  Why  else  do  workmen 
"scrap  for  a  chance"  at  the  overtime?  Why  else  should 
the  electricians  have  this  rule:  "When  a  contractor  finds 
it  necessary  to  work  men  overtime,  men  working  on  the 
job  must  have  the  preference"?  On  a  big  Boston  job 
with  work  going  on  day  and  night  two  months  ago  the 
labor  delegates  used  to  complain  that  the  superintendent 
played  favorites  and  gave  certain  men  an  unfair  share  of 
the  after-hours  work. 

If  the  unions'  aim  is  merely  discouragement  of  excessive 
toil,  surely  that  result  could  be  secured  as  readily  by  a 
smaller  penalty.  The  railways  pay  time-and-a-half  for 
overtime  and  they  are  as  keen  to  keep  down  the  extra 
charge  as  are  the  builders  with  the  double  time  exaction. 
The  one  best  way  to  reduce  the  amount  of  overtime  is  to 
make  its  rewards  less  attractive.  Everybody  wants  the 
workers  to  enjoy  good  wages  and  fair  hours,  to  receive 
a  full  day's  pay  for  a  real  day's  work.  But,  as  some  time 
we  shall  try  to  show  more  at  length,  the  excess  charges 
that  we  emphasize  today  and  the  workings  of  the  rules  to 
which  we  have  referred  in  earlier  articles,  have  so  boosted 
the  cost  of  building  in  this  city  that  nobody  can  afford  to 
build,  and  the  workers  instead  of  having  more  work  as  the 
result  of  their  rules  have  no  work  at  all. 

A  MACHINE   TAMMANY  MIGHT  ENVY 


steel  sash  in  iron  frames  and  setting  sash  in 
masonry  —  do  these  jobs  belong  to  the  iron  workers  or  the 
carpenters? 

Fitting  steel  sash  into  concrete  openings  and  fitting 
steel  sash  into  brick  openings  —  are  both  these  jobs  properly 
done  by  masons  or  may  the  cement  finishers;  do  one  of 
them? 

Placing  "concealed"  iron  door  "bucks"  in  the  partitions 


18      THE  PUBLIC  REFUSES  TO  PAY 

in  which  wooden  doors  are  to  be  set — does  the  Carpenters' 
Union  or  the  Iron  Workers'  Union  control  that  job? 

Knocking  the  rough  nubbins,  the  "fins,"  off  the  ceiling 
of  a  new  building  with  a  chisel — which  trade  union  is 
entitled  to  that  job?  Must  the  mason  do  it  or  may  the 
plain  laborer  do  it? 

Such  questions  as  these  are  subjects  of  "jurisdiction" 
to  be  determined  by  the  rules  of  the  American  Federation 
of  Labor.  Over  the  interpretation  of  these  rules  many  a 
lively  controversy  is  waged.  Lucky  is  the  owner,  the 
architect,  the  contractor,  who  erects  a  big  building  these 
days  without  at  least  one  strike  over  precisely  such  matters. 

On  one  Boston  building  the  carpenters  struck  and  re- 
mained off  the  job  for  a  month  because  the  iron  workers 
were  assigned  the  setting  of  the  door  "bucks."  The 
Federation  rules  give  the  setting  of  steel  sashes  in  iron 
frames  to  the  iron  workers  and  in  masonry  to  the  car- 
penters. But  in  the  putting  up  of  a  fine  new  building  in 
this  city  both  unions  claimed  both  jobs  and  for  some  time 
the  owner  and  the  builder  stood  by  and  watched  the  row. 
In  another  building  lately  under  construction  here  the 
masons  and  cement  finishers  had  a  collision  over  the 
setting  of  steel  sash  in  concrete  openings.  The  Federa- 
tion rules  so  assign  it.  But  the  masons  refused  to  accept 
the  rule,  claiming  all  the  steel  sash  whatever  the  openings. 
Again  there  ensued  strife,  delay,  lessening  of  efficiency, 
increase  of  costs,  waste  of  time.  When,  in  the  case  of 
another  large  construction,  the  laborers  and  the  cement 
finishers  collided  over  the  clearing  of  the  ceilings  the 
laborers  finally  won  out  but  much  damage  had  been  done 
before  a  settlement  was  at  last  patched  up  between  the 
rival  unions. 

These  are  typical  examples  of  the  jurisdictional  com- 
plications that  the  rules  of  the  unions  invariably  produce 
when  a  building  enterprise  is  going  forward.  In  the  case 
of  one  big  Boston  job  no  fewer  than  seven  strikes  ensued 


THE  PUBLIC  REFUSES  TO  PAY      19 

upon  just  such  differences  as  these,  and  twice  seven 
prolonged  arguments  that  threatened  to  produce  serious 
trouble  but  did  not  actually  reach  the  point  of  a  stoppage 
of  work. 

One  more  illustration:  When  the  war  came  the  govern- 
ment undertook  in  a  hurry  to  provide  a  village  of  homes 
for  the  employes  of  the  Navy  Department's  Proving 
Ground  and  Smokeless  Powder  Works  25  miles  from 
Washington.  The  population  at  Indian  Head  boomed 
almost  over  night  from  500  to  5,000.  Employees  lived  in 
wobbling  shacks  or  drove  20  miles  twice  a  day.  After 
much  searching  the  Housing  Corporation  got  100  car- 
penters and  20  plasterers  to  produce  the  needed  houses, 
dormitories,  schoolhouse  and  postoffice.  The  testing  of 
the  big  naval  guns  jarred  the  ground  so  that  the  usual 
plastering  methods  could  not  be  used.  Plaster  on  lath 
would  shake  off.  A  plaster  board  composition  had  to  be 
substituted.  It  went  up  in  sheets  with  a  slight  joint 
between  to  be  covered  with  narrow  strips  of  wood  pro- 
ducing a  neat  panelling  effect. 

But — was  that  a  plastering  job  or  a  carpentering  job? 
Every  carpenter  stopped  work,  in  spite  of  the  dire  need 
for  those  buildings,  the  minute  the  plasterers  began  to 
line  the  rooms.  The  corporation  merely  said:  "That 
work  must  be  done.  Hurry  and  settle  who  shall  do  it." 
After  a  fortnight  the  unions  decided  that  if  wooden  strips 
covered  the  cracks  carpenters  must  do  the  work,  but  if 
plaster  filled  the  cracks  plasterers  must  do  it.  Mean- 
while the  carpenters  had  scattered  far  and  wide,  a  new 
force  had  to  be  gathered,  and  that  village  of  homes  and 
dormitories  for  war  workers  came  into  actual  use  a  month 
behind  time. 

Another  matter  to  which  the  Herald  as  yet  has  not 
given  much  attention  has  to  do  with  the  rather  extensive 
double  organization  that  exists  upon  every  big  building 
construction  in  Boston  and  the  other  cities  of  the  country. 


£0     THE  PUBLIC  REFUSES  TO  PAY 

Thus: 

Every  trade  union  has  its  business  agent  who  serves 
as  a  general  overseer  of  the  work  done  by  the  men  of  his 
craft.  He  is  paid  by  the  union.  Then  to  watch  the  union 
men  at  work  upon  each  job  the  agent  selects  a  steward. 
These  stewards  use  tools,  work  with  the  rest  of  the  men 
of  the  craft,  and  in  addition  enforce  the  union  rules, 
report  violations,  and  see  to  it  that  the  fast  workers  do  not 
outstrip  the  slow  ones.  They  draw  their  wages  like  the 
other  workmen.  The  business  agent  circulates  over  the 
city  from  job  to  job.  The  job  stewards  keep  the  agent 
informed  as  to  conditions  on  the  separate  jobs.  This  is 
the  organization  of  practically  all  the  27  unions  that  have 
to  do  with  Boston  building  operations. 

Surely  then  the  owners,  the  people  who  are  investing 
money  in  a  building,  will  have  their  interests  protected 
under  the  organization  that  the  contractor  makes.  But 
are  the  builders  thus  protected? 

The  contractor's  superintendent  has  general  supervision 
of  the  job.  Every  union  whose  men  work  on  that  job 
must  have  its  foreman.  The  superintendent  names  these 
foremen.  But  every  foreman  must  be  a  member  of  the 
union. 

That  is  to  say,  every  job  steward,  chosen  outright  as  a 
union  representative,  and  every  foreman,  chosen  nomin- 
ally to  represent  the  interests  of  the  employer  and  owner, 
must  be  a  union  man.  The  owner's  cause  both  ways  is 
in  the  hands  of  men  whose  freedom  is  limited  by  union 
rules. 

These  foremen  handle  no  tools,  they  merely  give  orders. 
They  are  paid  a  higher  rate  than  the  men  who  handle  the 
tools.  And  when  the  job  is  a  big  one  sub-foremen  are 
appointed,  sometimes  to  the  number  of  three  or  four. 
For  instance,  when  concreting  is  to  be  done  the  carpenters 
may  divide  into  three  forces,  one  to  make  the  forms,  one 
to  erect  them,  one  to  strip  them  away  after  the  concrete 


THE)     PUBLIC     KEFU8HB     TO     PAY  21 

has  been  poured  and  the  walls  are  solid.  Each  force  has 
its  under-foremari,  using  no  tools,  and  getting  the  larger 
wage  because  he  gives  orders.  All  these,  of  course,  are 
union  men. 

This  is  one  of  the  fundamental  differences  between  the 
master  builders  and  the  unions  today  in  Boston.  The 
builders  object  to  the  foremen  on  the  job  being  union 
men.  As  things  are,  however  fair  a  foreman  may  strive 
to  be,  his  primary  obligation  is  bound  to  be  to  the  union 
with  which  he  is  affiliated.  Many  things  he  might  like 
to  do  he  does  not  do  because  the  union  is  his  master. 

Seemingly  then  the  owner's  only  function  is  to  accept 
the  decisions  of  the  functionaries  of  the  unions  and  send 
the  weekly  pay  roll  over  to  the  building  at  the  right  time 
on  pay  day. 

This  kind  of  organization  in  a  city  devoid  of  competi- 
tion gives  the  unions  every  opportunity  to  slow  down  their 
workmen.  Every  one  who  has  any  knowledge  of  building 
knows  that  a  job  steward's  prime  duty  is  to  see  to  it  that 
his  men  do  not  "do  too  much"  work.  "Cut  it  out," 
"Slow  up,"  "Go  easy,"  such  directions  are  on  his  lips 
every  hour.  He  is  there  for  keeps.  If  the  owner  enters 
objection  he  usually  finds  that  every  thing  is  right  and 
regular  under  the  rules. 

Competition  in  the  building  industry  does  not  exist 
in  Boston  today.  A  few  years  ago  both  open  and  closed 
shops  bid  for  the  business.  But  the  leaders  of  the  labor 
unions — some  of  them  men  whose  shrewdness  and  organ- 
izing ability  no  one  who  knows  conditions  will  deny — 
so  manipulated  the  situation  that  open  shop  contractors 
gradually  were  eliminated.  Public  sentiment,  backing 
the  union  cause,  helped  the  process. 

So  now  organized  labor,  through  the  closed  shop,  holds 
a  practical  monopoly  over  the  building  industry  in  this 
city.  A  contractor  who  maintains  an  open  shop  may 
erect  a  building  outside  of  Boston,  but  he  cannot  operate 


22      THE  PUBLIC  REFUSES  TO  PAY 

in  the  city  because  the  labor  supply  has  been  absorbed 
by  the  unions.  If  he  undertakes  a  job  in  the  city  he  must 
import  his  labor.  Nor  can  a  non-union  laborer  find  em- 
ployment in  Boston  save  to  a  very  limited  extent. 

With  monopoly  and  the  possession  of  arbitrary  power 
have  come  a  multitude  of  abuses,  all  intended  to  increase 
the  number  of  men  that  are  employed  on  any  given  job,  to 
reduce  their  output,  to  make  it  easier  to  run  overtime  and 
draw  double  pay,  to  lessen  the  supply  of  labor,  to  prevent 
the  use  of  devices  that  would  save  labor  and  speed  up  work. 

With  autocracy  have  come  scraps  within  the  unions 
over  the  interpretation  of  their  own  rules,  the  employment 
of  excessive  numbers  of  non-tool-using  watchmen,  one  at 
least  of  whose  duties  is  to  prevent  the  men  doing  too 
much  work,  and  such  a  general  decrease  of  efficiency  as 
to  penalize  all  who  build  and  imperil  the  welfare  of  the 
entire  community.  The  public  pays  the  bills  ultimately, 
and  when  "trouble"  comes  merely  stands  on  the  sidelines 
and  waits  for  labor  to  solve  the  mazes  its  own  rules  create. 

"NOTORIOUSLY  INEFFICIENT" 

A  O  untie  a  rope  is  a  very  simple  thing,  but  union 
labor  finds  a  way  to  make  it  a  complicated  operation. 
The  unions  decree  how  and  by  whom  it  shall  be  done. 
Untying  a  rope  becomes  a  subject  for  "jurisdictional 
adjustment"  under  the  union  rules,  a  time-losing  and  cost- 
consuming  job,  not  a  plain  chore  for  ordinary  labor,  but 
a  thing  to  be  done  only  by  skilled  labor.  It's  this  way: 
You  are  hurrying  along  with  a  big  building  job.  The 
lumber  forms  are  up  ready  for  the  pouring  of  your  con- 
crete. The  elevator  carries  the  material  to  the  hopper 
at  the  top  of  the  tower  and  from  the  hopper  it  is  poured 
down  a  chute  and  spilled  into  place.  The  chute  is  held 
in  position  by  a  hemp  rope.  From  time  to  time  the  posi- 
tion of  the  chute  must  be  changed  a  bit;  it  must  be  swung 


THE  PUBLIC  REFUSES  TO  PAY      23 

along  to  give  the  concrete  ready  access  to  the  empty  spaces 
it  is  to  fill.  Now  plain  labor  easily  could  shift  that  chute, 
and  plenty  of  plain  labor  is  right  on  the  spot.  But  plain 
labor  has  no  right,  "under  the  rules,"  to  touch  that  rope. 
No,  that  is  a  technical  job  requiring  the  attention  of  a 
skilled  workman  whose  wages  are  much  higher  than  those 
of  a  mere  laborer.  You  have  to  send  for  "Bill"  or  yell 
for  "Sam,"  and  the  structural  steel  worker  who  rigged  the 
chute  must  untie  the  rope  that  moors  it;  plain  labor  then 
swings  the  chute  to  its  new  position;  skilled  labor  once 
more  ties  the  rope — and  the  making  of  the  concrete  walls 
may  proceed,  now  that  all  the  requirements  of  the  rules 
have  been  complied  with. 

Such  regulations  abound  in  the  organization  of  the 
building  trades  unions.  Any  body  of  men  whose  dominat- 
ing aim  is  to  promote  efficiency,  to  render  the  utmost  of 
service  in  the  minimum  of  time,  would  not  tolerate  such 
rules.  But  the  rule  that  decrees  who  shall  rig  that  rope  is  a 
symbol  of  a  thousand  others,  all  having  to  do  with  the 
minute  classification  of  all  the  multitude  of  processes  that 
enter  into  the  construction  of  all  modern  buildings.  Every 
craft  jealously  watches  every  other  craft  and  instantly 
resents  any  invasion  of  its  "rights"  by  its  fellow-workmen 
of  a  different  union.  Woe  be  to  the  builder  who  permits 
a  pipe  to  be  fitted  or  a  load  to  be  carried  or  a  wire  to  be 
run  or  a  brick  to  be  handled  by  a  member  of  the  wrong 
union.  For  instance: 

Four  unions  squabble  over  the  building  of  some  scaf- 
folds. Does  that  job  belong  to  the  International  Hod 
Carriers,  Building  and  Common  Laborers  Union,  or  to  the 
United  Brotherhood  of  Carpenters  and  Joiners,  or  to  the 
Operative  Plasterers  and  Cement  Finishers  International 
Association,  or  to  the  Bricklayers,  Masons  and  Plasterers 
International  Union? 

Whose  job  is  it  to  paint  a  radiator?  Does  it  belong  to 
the  Brotherhood  of  Painters,  Decorators  and  Paper 


24      THE  PUBLIC  REFUSES  TO  PAY 

Hangers  or  to  the  United  Association  of  Plumbers  and 
Steam  Fitters?  The  building  trades  department  of  the 
American  Federation  of  Labor  debated  that  issue  at  its 
Rochester  convention  a  few  years  ago  and  awarded  the 
right  to  paint  a  radiator  to  the  painter. 

Five  unions  claimed  then*  "rights"  in  doing  acetylene 
and  electric  welding.  May  it  be  done  by  the  Electrical 
Workers,  the  Sheet  Metal  Workers,  the  Iron  Workers,  the 
Plumbers  and  Steam  Fitters,  or  the  Machinists?  The 
Philadelphia  convention  of  the  building  trades  department 
of  the  A.  F.  of  L.  had  to  settle  the  quarrel. 

Three  unions  lately  had  a  difference  over  the  right  to  set 
metal  forms  for  concrete  columns.  The  United  Brother- 
hood of  Carpenters  and  Joiners,  the  Amalgamated  Sheet 
Metal  Workers  International  Alliance  and  the  Interna- 
tional Association  of  Bridge  and  Structural  Iron  Workers 
got  the  formal  and  official  decision  on  the  question  on 
December  4,  last. 

It's  a  long  list.  The  sheet  metal  workers — which  is 
short  for  the  Amalgamated  Sheet  Metal  Workers  Inter- 
national Alliance — and  the  lathers  want  to  know  about 
metal  floor  domes.  The  painters  and  asbestos  workers 
want  to  know  about  tacking  muslin  and  canvas  used  for 
decorative  purposes.  The  waterproofers,  the  painters  and 
the  roofers  must  have  a  decision  about  applying  damp- 
resisting  preparations.  The  operative  plasterers,  the 
cement  finishers  and  the  common  laborers  have  a  difference 
over  the  repairing  of  defects  in  concrete  work  caused  by 
leakage  or  the  sagging  of  forms. 

These  are  suggestive  illustrations  of  the  way  rigid 
unionization  works.  The  men  are  classified  under  twenty- 
seven  different  titles.  The  labor  of  erecting  a  big  building 
falls  under  a  score  or  more  of  classifications.  Each  classi- 
fication is  an  air-tight  compartment.  Only  members  of 
one  union  have  any  right  therein.  One  man  may  use  the 
tools,  another  must  carry  them  about  the  building;  one 


THE  PUBLIC  REFUSES  TO  PAT      25 

man  may  dump  the  rods  in  a  pile,  another  must  sort  and 
lay  them  beside  the  places  they  are  to  go;  one  man  may 
swing  the  chute,  another  must  unhitch  the  rope  that  holds 
the  chute.  Absolute  and  exclusive  authority  in  Greater 
Boston  for  this  sytem  has  been  the  aim  of  the  labor 
unions.  The  labor  leaders  have  gone  to  great  lengths, 
even  at  times  when  the  peril  of  the  nation  demanded  the 
unselfish  service  of  every  citizen,  to  secure  for  the  unions 
that  position  of  impregnable  autocracy.  Evidence  of 
the  fact  is  plentiful.  Here  is  one  token : 

Somewhere  in  Greater  Boston  a  big  war  plant  is  in 
process  of  construction.  It  is  an  open  shop  job.  Any- 
body who  has  either  skill  or  labor  to  market  may  work 
here,  whether  he  has  a  union  card  or  not.  The  one  aim 
is  to  do  the  job  well  and  quickly.  The  country  is  at  war. 
The  output  of  the  plant  is  a  vital  necessity.  Everybody 
at  it  and  at  it  to  the  limit  is  the  motto.  And  union  labor 
leaders  undertake  to  compel  the  unionization  of  that  job, 
not  in  the  interest  of  speed  or  efficiency  or  economy,  but 
for  the  sole  purpose  of  furthering  the  union  cause  as  they 
conceive  that  cause. 

In  all  such  construction  certain  workers  occupy  pivotal 
or  key  positions.  If  they  quit,  other  workers,  often  more 
numerous,  must  also  quit.  A  job  that  has  been  galloping 
along  slows  down  to  a  walk;  perhaps  stops  altogether. 
That  method  of  attack  the  leaders  chose.  On  that  job 
the  steam  shovel  operators  and  cranemen  were  getting 
the  union  wage  and  the  union  overtime.  At  the  lowest 
they  made  $48  a  week.  At  the  time  the  thrust  came  some 
were  getting  about  $100  a  week.  Without  warning  these 
men  were  called  off  the  plant.  The  union  executive  in 
New  York  promised  to  supply  other  men  and  then  with- 
drew the  promise.  Another  union  executive  pledged  a 
supply  and  then  rescinded  his  pledge.  The  builders  had 
to  go  to  the  Lehigh  Valley  for  men  who  had  been  digging 
there  for  a  cement  company;  the  builders  also  secured 


26      THE  PUBLIC  REFUSES  TO  PAY 

some  superannuated  members  of  the  Steam  Shovelers' 
Union  and  set  them  to  work  once  more.  These  men  were 
cared  for  and  fed  on  the  plant. 

Now  these  steam  shovel  men  at  the  time  of  the  strike 
were  in  a  key  position.  Fifty  trucks  were  serving  those 
shovels,  also  three  trains  of  cars  and  six  locomotives. 
When  it  seemed  likely  that  the  company  might  defeat 
the  labor  leaders,  the  union  firemen  quit  and  the  steam 
road-roller  men.  Towards  the  end  of  the  crisis  many 
union  carpenters  were  warned  off  the  plant.  Some  stayed 
for  a  time  and  were  fined  $100  each.  Others  stuck  to  the 
end — rating  the  nation  above  the  union — and  found  them- 
selves assessed  $250  each  and  the  fulfilment  of  the  penalty 
a  preliminary  to  employment  on  other  jobs.  Some  of 
those  men  left  that  plant  with  tears  in  their  eyes. 

No  question  of  wages,  or  time,  or  conditions  was  in- 
volved. Only  one  aim  inspired  those  strikes.  The  labor 
leaders  either  intended  to  compel  the  unionization  of  the 
job  or  they  intended  so  to  hamper  and  retard  the  work 
that  always  thereafter  they  might  cite  it  as  an  illustration 
of  the  botch  that  an  open  shop  policy  causes  when  it  under- 
takes a  big  contract — and  these  two  things  tend  towards  the 
same  aim,  the  complete  unionization  of  Greater  Boston. 

Well,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  is  the  closed  shop  more  effi- 
cient than  the  open  shop?  Comparisons  that  mean 
anything  are  hard  to  get.  But  here  is  one  real  calcula- 
tion of  costs,  accurately  made  by  an  expert.  He  had  at 
his  command  the  facts  as  to  building  costs  from  two  big 
concerns,  Company  A,  a  unionized  concern,  and  Com- 
pany B,  an  open-shop  concern.  He  plotted  a  curve,  chart 
fashion,  to  show  how  the  two  compared,  starting  with  the 
year  1914  as  his  base  at  100.  Thus: 
Year  Co.  A  Co.  B  Year  Co.  A  Co.  B 

1914 100      100     1917 196      138 

1915 110      102     1918..... 216      158 

1916..  ..144      118     1919..  ..254      188 


THE  PUBLIC  REFUSES  TO  PAT      27 

The  comparison  is  all  in  favor  of  the  open  shop. 
In  the  five  years  union  costs  went  up  154  per  cent;  labor 
cost  two  and  one-half  times  what  it  cost  in  1914.  By 
comparison  the  open-shop  increase  was  large  but  relatively 
small.  Be  it  understood  that  these  two  concerns  do 
precisely  the  same  kind  of  work  and  their  materials  cost 
the  same.  Both  pay  the  union  scale. 

The  other  day  the  director  of  research  of  the  National 
Association  of  Credit  Men  published  the  results  of  an 
extensive  study  of  the  building  situation.  Said  he  in 
the  report:  "Building  trades  labor  in  1920  was  notoriously 
inefficient." 

"Notoriously  inefficient" — that  is  one  of  the  foundation 
reasons  why  the  general  public — for  years  enthusiastic 
in  its  support  of  labor — today  is  severely  critical  of  labor. 
The  people  today  are  ready  to  applaud  every  unselfish 
thing  that  labor  does,  to  pay  well  for  every  genuine  day's 
work  that  labor  performs.  Occasionally,  even  in  the 
midst  of  such  conditions  as  exist  in  Boston  today,  the  rank 
and  file  of  a  labor  union's  membership  defy  their  leaders 
in  the  interest  of  the  public.  Here  is  such  a  case: 

On  a  big  government  emergency  job  in  war  time  near 
Boston  the  electric  linemen  were  ordered  away.  Three 
days  after  a  big  snow  storm  came.  The  lines  all  fell,  the 
plant  was  without  light  and  power.  And  those  linemen 
came  back,  keeping  out  of  sight  of  the  union  process 
servers;  wet  to  the  skin  they  fought  that  storm;  they  put 
the  lines  back  in  shape — and  then  formally  quit. 

Deeds  of  that  sort  will  help  labor  to  regain  lost  ground. 
The  trouble,  as  a  rule,  is  not  with  the  mass  of  the  men; 
it  is  with  their  leaders,  their  business  agents.  The  leaders 
have  put  labor  "in  bad"  with  the  public;  labor  has  a 
reputation  for  "notorious  inefficiency"  to  live  down; 
only  by  living  it  down  will  labor  regain  public  approval. 


88     THE  PUBLIC  BBFU8B8  TO  PAY 


BUT— ITS  ALL  "UNDER  THE  RULES" 

XV.LWAYS  have  a  Ford  car  chauffeur  at  hand  when 
you  undertake  the  erection  of  any  sizeable  building. 
As  a  handy  man  who  can  keep  a  "tin  Lizzie"  running  he 
will  probably  save  you  a  lot  of  time  and  money  by  tinker- 
ing your  building  machinery  after  hours  so  that  when 
"skilled"  union  men  come  on  the  job  in  the  morning  they 
will  not  be  embarrassed  by  their  inability  to  keep  their 
tools  in  order.  For  instance: 

In  this  city  on  a  large  construction  job  nine  engineers 
and  one  master  mechanic  were  employed.  They  had  to 
operate  nine  engines,  some  electric,  some  gasoline  and 
others  steam.  The  gas  engines  got  out  of  order  pretty 
often.  Some  times  one  would  stop  at  mid-forenoon,  and 
another  at  mid-afternoon,  but  when  one  once  quit  it 
seldom  resumed  the  same  day.  This  because  under  the 
rules  a  union  man  only  could  fix  the  engine  and  very  sel- 
dom did  any  union  man  have  the  knowledge  or  skill  to  do 
the  fixing.  Classed  as  "skilled"  men,  paid  as  skilled 
men,  and  called  engineers,  the  men  on  that  job — and  in 
other  cases,  too,  for  this  is  not  an  isolated  instance — once 
an  engine  struck  on  their  hands  could  do  nothing  but 
dissemble  or  bluff  the  balance  of  the  day.  They  might 
declare  the  machine  worn  out  and  say  it  must  go  to  the 
shop,  but  the  obvious  fact  was  that  they  were  ignorant  of 
the  principles  on  which  their  engines  operated  and  did  not 
know  how  to  remedy  simple  troubles.  But  by  the  rules 
the  union  man  must  stay  with  his  engine.  Importing 
help  would  do  no  good. 

Well,  on  any  job  of  magnitude  the  builder  will  have  a 
small  car,  often  a  Ford,  in  service  day  after  day  as  the 
"job  car,"  for  running  errands  and  saving  time.  The 
chauffeur  will  receive  about  $25  a  week.  In  this  case 
the  chauffeur  liked  to  tinker.  He  knew  when  it  was 


THE  PUBLIC  REFUSES  TO  PAY     29 

necessary  to  take  a  machine  apart  and  when  a  rap  with  a 
wrench  would  solve  all  problems.  So  he  would  stroll  over 
any  evening  a  gas  engine  was  "off,"  look  it  over,  and  in 
15  minutes  have  it  running  again.  He  did  it  partly 
because  of  his  liking  for  machinery  and  partly  in  the 
interest  of  the  job.  Next  day  the  union  engineers  would 
find  all  in  order,  and,  rather  than  raise  any  objections 
that  might  tend  to  the  exposure  of  their  own  incompetency, 
would  go  to  work  without  remark. 

Further  to  illustrate  the  union  tendency  to  claim  all  the 
work  in  sight,  whether  competent  for  it  or  not — 

A  Boston  hospital  must  transfer  its  X-ray  outfit  from 
one  building  to  another.  A  specialist  for  twenty  years 
devoted  to  such  work  had  originally  installed  the  apparatus 
and  was  engaged  to  dismantle  it  and  set  it  up  in  the  new 
plant.  He  started  to  work  on  a  Saturday  noon  and 
planned  to  have  the  job  finished  the  following  Monday 
morning.  But  he  counted  without  the  union.  It  hap- 
pened that  a  lot  of  union  electricians  were  wiring  the  new 
building.  At  once  they  demanded  that  the  non-union 
expert  stop  work;  they  refused  to  go  on  until  he  had  left 
the  building.  The  understanding  was  they  would  be  all 
done  by  Tuesday  noon  when  the  specialist  might  come 
back.  But  their  work  strung  out.  They  did  not  finish 
for  ten  days.  Then  the  specialist  could  not  be  had  for 
the  X-ray  installation  and  the  union  men  took  on  the  task. 

Not  one  of  them  knew  anything  about  that  kind  of 
work.  Every  little  while  they  had  to  seek  help  from  the 
operator,  a  woman  nurse.  She  had  to  explain  the  assem- 
bling of  the  machine.  Repeatedly  work  done  wrong  had 
to  be  undone  and  then  done  right.  At  last,  they  sought 
the  aid  of  the  X-ray  expert  himself.  They  had  refused  to 
work  in  the  same  building  with  this  non-union  man  and 
now  they  asked  him  to  save  the  job  the  union  had  botched. 
He  refused.  Whereupon  they  quit  and  he  finished  the 
installation.  Nearly  three  weeks  of  extra  time  had 


30      THE  PUBLIC  REFUSES  TO  PAY 

been  lost,  much  useless  labor  had  been  paid  for,  and  patients 
needing  X-ray  attention  had  been  sent  to  other  institutions. 

Also  in  that  hospital  many  buzzers  are  needed  in  the 
various  rooms.  Union  men  seemed  slow  in  installing 
them.  The  concern  employed  a  non-union  man  to  place 
them.  He  reported  "all  done"  in  a  few  hours.  Next 
morning  the  union  men  found  the  buzzers  ready,  and — 
call  it  childish  or  call  it  criminal — they  cut  some  wires, 
they  stuck  chewing  gum  around  the  hammer  of  one  buzzer, 
they  declared  the  material  poor  and  the  work  bad,  and 
demanded  that  the  buzzers  be  taken  out  and  the  whole 
thing  done  over  again — at  union  speed.  Yet  for  several 
hours  every  buzzer  had  been  working  entirely  to  the  satis- 
faction of  the  persons  for  whose  use  they  were  placed  in 
the  building. 

That  rule  about  one  man  to  one  machine  produces  some 
interesting  situations.  Here  are  some  things  that  hap- 
pened not  far  from  Boston. 

For  operating  a  steam  derrick  engine  the  job  properly 
required  a  hoisting  engineer.  For  operating  an  electrically 
driven  concrete  mixer  no  skilled  engineer  really  was 
required,  but  under  the  rules  one  had  nevertheless  to  be 
employed.  Two  other  machines  had  to  be  installed  on 
the  job — an  electrically  operated  cable  drum  to  haul 
"charging  cars,"  and  a  small,  electrically  driven  air  com- 
pressor to  furnish  air  for  the  rivetting  hammers.  Now  it 
happened  that  at  the  time  the  union  could  not  supply  two 
engineers  for  the  drum  and  the  compressor.  So  the  union 
arranged  to  have  the  two  men  already  on  the  job  do 
the  "additional  work."  The  compressor  ran  almost 
continuously  and  the  union  decreed  that  the  wages  a 
man  in  charge  of  it  would  have  received  should  be  divided 
between  those  two  engineers.  The  cable  drum  ran  oc- 
casionally, and  the  union  arranged  that  any  day  it  was 
operated  one  of  the  two  engineers  should  be  credited  with 
two  hours  additional  pay. 


THE  PUBLIC  REFUSES  TO  PAY     31 

It  is  a  fact  that  neither  of  the  two  engineers  rendered 
any  service  in  connection  with  either  the  compressor  or 
the  drum  yet  that  each  man  received  an  extra  half-day's 
pay  on  account  of  one  machine  and  that  one  man  received 
an  additional  quarter-day's  pay  every  day  the  other 
machine  worked.  That  is,  both  men  always  got  twelve 
hours'  pay  for  eight  hours'  work  and  one  man  often  got 
fourteen  hours'  pay  for  eight  hours'  work. 

And  here  is  another  chapter  in  that  story.  One  evening 
the  job  required  the  running  of  the  concrete  mixer.  Its 
engineer  wanted  the  night  off  to  attend  a  meeting  of  his 
union.  He  arranged  with  the  foreman  of  the  concrete 
gang  to  look  after  the  machine  in  his  absence.  The 
mixer  ran  until  9  o'clock.  Next  day  the  engineer  de- 
manded— and  ultimately  received — pay  at  the  over-hours' 
rate  for  the  time  the  machine  ran  in  his  own  voluntary 
absence. 

It's  all  under  the  rules.  The  rules  are  intended  to  make 
such  charges  possible.  Machinery  may  need  no  attention, 
machines  may  run  themselves,  but  by  the  rules  owners 
must  pay  just  the  same. 

A  hoisting  engineer  gets  a  full  day's  pay  for  operating 
his  engine.  If  a  steam  pump  or  pulsometer  or  concrete 
mixer  is  attached  to  that  engine  he  must  have  an  addi- 
tional $2,  or  the  amount  of  two  hours'  pay  under  the 
scale.  Actually  he  may  do  nothing  but  turn  a  valve  or 
throw  a  switch  twice  or  four  times  a  day.  Moreover  the 
machine  may  not  even  run.  Just  so  long  as  the  connec- 
tion continues  between  the  engine  and  the  attached 
apparatus  the  $2  extra  per  day  must  be  paid. 

If  the  engineer  spends  a  half-hour  in  the  morning 
firing  his  engine  he  gets  an  extra  hour's  pay.  Sometimes 
the  night  watchman  does  the  firing.  But  to  do  it  he  must 
be  a  "licensed"  man.  The  rule  reads:  "On  jobs  where 
there  is  no  licensed  watchman,  engineer  shall  get  up 
steam  and  shall  receive  one  hour's  pay  for  the  same." 


32      THE  PUBLIC  REFUSES  TO  PAY 

By  the  rules  you  may  shift  a  derrick  crew  from  one 
crane  to  another.  But  an  engineer  sticks  by  the  engine 
with  which  he  starts.  On  a  big  job  you  have  a  motor  and 
derrick  at  each  end  of  your  building.  The  trucks  will 
deliver  materials  to  the  derrick  nearest  where  they  will 
be  required.  On  any  day  when  only  one  motor  is  running 
if  a  truck  arrives  with  a  load  that  goes  to  the  opposite 
end  of  the  structure  you  cannot  shift  your  engineer.  He 
may  have  nothing  whatever  to  do,  but  you  must  send  for 
another  union  man  to  operate  the  idle  engine  or  you  must 
have  your  goods  hoisted  to  a  place  distant  from  their 
point  of  application  and  later  handle  them  all  over  again. 

These  rules  are  supposed  to  operate  to  the  advantage 
of  the  men  who  work  under  them.  They  do  not.  Not 
only  do  they  penalize  owners  and  the  entire  public  un- 
justly but  they  damage  the  whole  labor  cause  by  demand- 
ing more  and  more  pay  not  for  more  and  better  work, 
but  for  less  and  poorer  work.  The  only  way  labor  can 
permanently  help  itself  is  by  doing,  each  and  every  man, 
the  best  work  and  the  most  work  of  which  he  is  capable, 
expecting  to  receive,  as  he  would  abundantly  deserve, 
handsome  pay  therefor. 

WHAT  THE  CHAMBER  OF  COMMERCE  FOUND 

J_  HE  report  just  rendered  by  "the  special  committee 
of  the  Chamber  of  Commerce  on  the  building  situation  in 
Boston"  confirms  in  practically  every  respect  the  state- 
ments that  have  appeared  in  the  Herald's  double-column 
editorials  on  the  same  subject. 

"  It  is  generally  admitted  and  recognized  that  the  efficiency 
of  labor  decreased  very  generally  during  the  war  and  showed 
very  few  signs  of  increasing  up  to  the  beginning  of  1921." 

"The  frank  and  fair  labor  leaders  agree  with  the  builders 
that  inefficiency  in  labor  existed  during  the  war  and  for 
some  time  thereafter." 


THE  PUBLIC  REFUSES  TO  PAY     33 

"Decreased  labor  productivity  necessitated  the  use  of 
a  larger  number  of  men  for  a  given  amount  of  work, 
intensified  the  labor  shortage,  and  thereby  increased 
building  costs  materially." 

"The  production  of  labor  at  the  end  of  1920  was  about 
three-fourths  of  what  it  was  in  pre-war  times." 

"The  laborers  and  mechanics  in  the  building  industry 
owe  it  as  much  to  themselves  as  to  the  public  to  produce 
efficiently  and  to  the  best  of  their  ability." 

"The  cost  of  building  can  be  very  radically  reduced  by 
increased  efficiency  and  productivity  of  the  laborer  and 
mechanic." 

Precisely — the  Herald  has  been  saying  just  these 
things. 

These  editorials  have  emphasized  the  artificial  limita- 
tion of  the  labor  supply  by  the  union  rules  that  restrict 
the  number  of  apprentices.  The  report  quotes  from  these 
restrictive  rules :  "  The  cement  finishers  provide  that '  not 
more  than  one  apprentice  shall  be  allowed  on  a  job  to 
every  five  finishers  or  fraction  thereof  employed,  except 
by  special  permission  of  the  union.' '  "The  Carpenters' 
Union  provides  that  'No  person  over  the  age  of  22  years 
shall  be  admitted  to  membership  as  an  apprentice.  No 
person  shall  be  admitted  as  an  apprentice  until  he  has 
followed  the  carpenter's  trade  for  at  least  six  months. 
The  regular  term  of  apprenticeship  shall  be  four  years. 
The  number  of  apprentices  shall  not  exceed  one  to  each 
six  journey-men  employed  in  each  job  or  shop.' '  "The 
plasterers  provide  that  to  'constitute  a  journeyman  a 
boy  shall  be  required  to  serve  a  regular  apprenticeship 
of  at  least  four  years.' '  And,  says  the  report:  "Mr. 
James  P.  Dobbs,  business  agent  of  the  Plasterers'  Union, 
Local  No.  19,  testified  that  in  1914  there  were  660  journey- 
men on  the  membership  roll  of  the  union  and  at  the 
present  time  there  are  about  350."  And:  "Mr.  John 
Carroll,  business  agent  of  the  Cement  Finishers'  Union, 


34  THE     PUBLIC     REFUSES     TO     PAT 

said  there  were  approximately  300  journeymen  in  his 
organization  and  only  twelve  apprentices.'* 

Our  editorials  have  dealt  with  the  union  restrictions  on 
the  size  of  a  paint  brush.  The  report  says:  "On  Decem- 
ber 18,  1918,  the  Painters'  District  Council  of  Boston 
rrotified  all  the  employers  that  'the  brush  to  be  used  in 
oil  shall  not  exceed  4^  inches  and  under  no  circumstances 
are  our  members  allowed  to  use  brushes  any  wider." 
We  have  referred  to  the  unions'  ruling  out  labor-saving 
devices,  as  the  paint  sprayer.  The  committee  reports: 
"On  December  2,  1918,  the  Painters'  District  Council 
notified  employers  on  and  after  December  15  the  mem- 
bers of  the  Brotherhood  will  not  be  allowed  to  work  with 
or  operate  any  machine  used  to  apply  paint  or  any  other 
substance  used  by  painters  to  any  surface  where  paint 
is  applied."  We  also  have  noted  the  unions'  refusal  to 
work  with  any  of  the  accelerators  or  "quick-sets"  that 
cause  cement  to  harden  quickly,  thus  saving  overtime. 
The  report  verifies  the  fact  thus :  "  In  the  constitution  and 
by-laws  of  the  Boston  Cement,  Asphalt  and  Terrazzo 
Finishers"  Union,  Local  No.  534,  article  15,  section  6, 
it  is  provided  that  'no  member  of  this  union  may  work  on 
any  material  which  contains  quick-sets  or  any  matter  to 
unduly  hasten  the  hardening  and  setting  of  cement.' ' 

As  to  the  limitation  of  output,  the  committee  states 
that  "  the  wood,  wire  and  metal  lathers  have  gone  so  far 
as  to  specify  what  the  day's  work  shall  be.  Heretofore 
sixteen  bundles  of  wood  lath  have  been  prescribed  as  the 
size  of  a  day's  work,  and  now  it  is  proposed  that  twelve 
bundles  shall  constitute  a  day. %  The  report  quotes 
several  of  the  rules  of  the  Hoisting  and  Portable  Engineers 
by  which  they  claim  the  right  to  run  all  engines  and  boilers 
on  buildings  "whether  operated  by  steam,  electricity, 
gasoline  or  compressed  air,  including  pumps,  etc.  *  *  * 
or  any  other  machine  irrespective  of  its  motive  power." 
Also  that  this  rule  applies  to  the  gasoline  diaphragm  pump 


THE  PUBLIC  REFUSES  TO  PAY     35 

that  ran  through  the  noon  hour  and  entitled  the  "en- 
gineer" to  double  time  while  he  ate  his  meal — a  story  the 
Herald  told.  The  report  says  that  "a  hoisting  engineer 
can  operate  only  one  machine  or  engine  and  is  not  per- 
mitted to  shift  from  one  engine  to  another."  We  have 
illustrated  these  facts  in  terms  of  time  and  dollars,  as  our 
readers  will  recall. 

Moreover,  the  Chamber's  committee  mentions  "four 
classes  of  mechanics  in  the  building  industry  that  have 
been  working  under  a  five-day  week,  the  carpenters, 
plasterers,  lathers  and  painters."  There  is  also  a  fifth 
class,  perhaps  added  since  the  hearings,  the  tile  workers. 
The  Herald  has  referred  to  the  general  tendency  of  this 
time  limitation  to  add  to  the  amount  of  double-pay 
overtime  on  any  sizable  job.  The  report  says  that  "the 
labor  witnesses  testified  .  .  .  that  it  was  necessary 
to  rest  up  the  overworked  mechanic."  That  would 
seem  to  mean  that  the  carpenters,  lathers,  painters,  tile 
workers  and  plasterers  need  two  days  in  seven  to  "rest 
up"  from  their  "over  work"  on  five  days  in  seven. 

The  entire  report  makes  a  valuable  document,  filling 
twenty-six  single-spaced  typewritten  pages.  With  it 
went  verbatim  reports  of  testimony,  "exhibits,"  and  a 
quantity  of  charts.  Here  appears  the  story  of  the  juris- 
dictional  disputes,  with  the  consequent  slowing  up  on  the 
job  and  assignment  of  skilled  men  to  unskilled  work. 
Evidence  is  cited  that  mechanics  desired  and  sought  over- 
time work  and  that  applicants  wanted  to  be  satisfied  that 
double  pay  time  would  be  available  before  going  on  a  job. 
The  committee  quotes  the  electrical  workers'  requirement 
that  "when  a  contractor  finds  it  necessary  to  work  men 
overtime,  men  working  on  the  job  must  have  the 
preference." 

There  is  a  probable  error  in  one  point  of  the  report. 
The  Herald  heretofore  has  discussed  the  fact  that  on  a 
building  job  both  the  unions  and  the  owner  are  repre- 


36     THE  PUBLIC  REFUSES  TO  PAY 

sented  by  men  who  must  be  members  of  the  unions,  that 
is,  that  the  owner  and  his  contractors  are  without  dis- 
interested supervisors  of  the  work  the  building  crafts  do. 
Both  the  job  stewards  and  the  foremen  must  be  union 
men,  as  we  have  explained.  The  report  cites  a  few  of  the 
rules  that  thus  shut  the  owner  away  from  any  protective 
supervision.  For  the  carpenters,  "  It  shall  be  the  duty  of 
all  members  in  this  jurisdiction  to  see  that  a  steward  is 
elected  on  every  job,"  and  "All  foremen  and  sub-foremen 
shall  be  members  of  the  United  Brotherhood.  Members 
on  the  job  shall  take  orders  from  none  other."  Now, 
labor's  answer  to  this  charge  as  contained  in  the  report 
is  that  "the  requirement  is  not  universal"  and  that,  "for 
instance,  in  the  case  of  the  plumbers,  a  shop  foreman  or 
superintendent  need  not  be  a  union  man." 

We  think  these  statements  convey  a  wrong  impression. 
We  understand  that  foremen  on  building  jobs  in  all  the 
twenty-seven  crafts  of  the  Boston  Building  Council  must 
be  union  men.  If  any  exceptions  exist  to  the  rule,  the 
unions  did  not  cite  them  in  their  own  defence  at  the 
hearings  before  this  committee.  For  this  plumbers' 
"exception"  does  not  apply.  In  support  of  it  the  labor 
witnesses  quoted  section  11  of  the  plumbers'  agreement, 
thus:  "Shop  foreman  or  superintendent  need  not  be  a 
member  of  the  United  Association  or  any  labor  union, 
provided  he  does  not  use  tools  in  performing  his  duties." 
But  the  other  half  of  the  rule  does  not  appear  in  the  report. 
It  reads  thus:  "But  no  journeyman  shall  become  a 
superintendent  or  foreman  of  a  shop  while  under  dis- 
cipline or  in  bad  standing  by  local  No.  12  of  the  United 
Association."  As  a  matter  of  fact,  it  makes  no  difference 
whether  a  non-union  man  may  be  a  plumbing  shop  super- 
intendent or  not.  It's  the  limitation  as  to  job  foremen  to 
which  the  builders  object,  the  men  on  the  job  at  the  site 
where  the  building  is  going  up.  The  objection  to  job 
foremen  seems  to  have  been  answered  before  the  committee 


THE  PUBLIC  REFUSES  TO  PAY      37 

in  terms  of  a  rule  that  has  to  do  with  shop  superintendents 
in  one  craft.  And,  by  the  way,  section  9  of  this  plumbers' 
agreement  has  to  do  with  job  foremen  and  reads  thus: 
"  It  shall  be  the  duty  of  all  foremen  to  report  any  man  late 
on  the  job  to  his  employers  at  the  time  it  occurs."  The 
Herald  has  before  stated  that  this  rule  is  interpreted  to 
mean  that  the  foreman  shall  report  men  for  tardiness — 
and  for  nothing  else. 

The  report  contains  points  of  another  nature  to  which 
mere  reference  is  made  here  at  this  time.  The  committee 
surmises  that  "building  interests"  and  "material  men" 
have  fixed  prices  artificially,  combined  illegally  and  exacted 
excessive  profits.  But,  "handicapped  by  a  lack  of  autho- 
rity,'* the  committee  is  "unable  to  make  findings"  on  these 
matters  "substantiated  by  evidence."  We  do  not  know 
whether  these  conditions  exist  in  Boston  or  not.  If  they 
do,  we  hope  to  see  them  exposed  and  ended.  We  now 
deal  here  only  with  the  things  of  which  the  Herald  has 
been  treating  and  the  truth  of  which  this  illuminating 
report  abundantly  indorses.  We  say  once  more  that  we 
want  to  see  real  work  get  real  pay  and  that  we  also  want 
real  pay  to  produce  real  work.  In  the  process  of  deflation 
now  going  on  all  parties  must  share.  This  report  shows 
a  decrease  in  the  cost  of  living  in  the  twelve  months  of 
1920  of  more  than  8  per  cent,  and  a  lessening  of  the  food 
cost  of  an  average  family  in  February,  1921,  of  9  per  cent. 
We  have  figures  to  show  that  the  cost  of  materials  is 
coming  down.  The  chamber's  Committee  reports  that 
the  wage  rates  of  building  labor  between  1911  and  1921 
went  up  from  66  2-3  per  cent  to  237  per  cent.  Yet  the 
strike  now  on  in  Boston  was  precipitated  by  a  demand  for 
a  large  wage  increase.  And  in  labor  on  the  building  and 
in  labor  in  production  of  building  materials  you  pay  out, 
this  report  intimates,  more  than  four-fifths  of  the  total 
cost  of  your  building. 

One  thing  more:   It  has  been  said  at  times  that  union 


38     THE  PUBLIC  REFUSES  TO  PAY 

building  jobs  in  Boston  are  not  closed  to  non-union  men, 
that  non-union  men  may  be  employed  on  them  provided 
union  conditions  are  kept.  Yet,  according  to  this  report, 
that  is  a  mistake.  Says  the  document:  "The  United 
Building  Trades  Council  of  Boston  and  Vicinity,  according 
to  its  constitution  and  by-laws,  has  as  its  objects  'to 
build  up  all  building  trades  organizations  *  *  *  and 
to  see  that  each  man  employed  in  the  construction  of  a 
building  is  a  member  of  his  respective  organization  and 
carries  a  card  of,  or  button  of,  the  United  Building  Trades 
Council.'  " 

NOTHING   IS   DONE    "RIGHT"    UNTIL   A 
UNION  MAN  DOES  IT 

J  OHN  SMITH  lives  in  the  suburbs.  He  is  proud  of 
his  home  and  takes  pains  to  keep  it  trim.  He  is  handy 
with  tools  and  likes  to  tinker.  When  a  small  one-story 
addition  required  new  roof  and  clapboards  he  engaged  two 
carpenters  to  do  the  job.  But  he  could  not  stand  idly 
by,  so  he  put  on  his  overalls  and  began  to  pry  off  some  of 
the  old  boards  and  hammer  out  the  nails.  Presently  both 
the  carpenters  began  to  call  down  from  the  roof,  and  in  the 
conversation  that  followed  Mr.  Smith  learned  these 
things: 

That  these  union  carpenters  could  not  allow  him  to 
work  or  in  any  way  to  help  them  with  their  work  on  his 
house.  That,  however  good  his  intentions  and  however 
agreeable  their  personal  relations  he  could  not  get  round 
the  fact  that  he  had  no  union  card.  That  if  the  walking 
delegate  saw  him  hammering  on  "  their "  job  they  would 
be  liable  to  fines  of  $50  each.  That  they  might  themselves 
cheerfully  go  ahead  and  let  him  potter  away,  but  they 
dared  not  risk  the  heavy  hand  of  the  union's  business 
agent.  And  Mr.  Smith  had  to  lay  aside  his  tools. 

Thus  the  owner  learned  that  he  was  a  scab,  a  fact  that 


THE  PUBLIC  REFUSES  TO  PAY     39 

hundreds  of  other  Mr.  Smiths  have  learned  in  recent  years 
to  their  astonishment.  Owners  who  employ  union  men 
must  submit  to  union  rules. 

On  a  ten-story  apartment  house  in  this  city  the  elevator 
men  under  a  separate  contract  were  putting  in  the  steel 
framework  within  which  the  car  was  to  run.  To  construct 
the  "  well "  steel  beams  had  to  be  placed  about  the  opening 
on  each  floor  and  their  ends  sunk  into  the  brick  work. 
Each  beam  was  about  a  foot  in  height.  The  elevator 
workmen  cut  into  the  brick  and  cemented  in  the  beams 
from  the  first  floor  to  the  eighth.  Then  the  bricklayers 
protested.  The  elevator  men  were  doing  brick-mason's 
work.  The  union  could  not  tolerate  that  infraction  of 
their  rules.  The  work  might  be  almost  complete  and  it 
might  be  all  O  K,  but  it  ought  to  have  been  done  by 
bricklayers  and  would  have  to  be  done  by  bricklayers. 
And  faced  with  the  alternative  of  an  entire  cessation  of 
work  of  every  kind  on  that  apartment  the  man  who  paid 
the  bills  had  to  stand  on  the  side  lines  while  the  brick 
men  cut  out  all  those  steel  beams  and  cemented  them  in 
all  over  again. 

Here  is  a  large  building  in  process  of  construction  in 
Boston.  Ordinary  masons  for  some  time  have  been 
placing  and  cementing  some  plain  stone  inside  the  walls. 
Then  the  marble  setters  demand  their  "rights."  "Under 
the  rules"  everything  in  the  way  of  stone  that  goes  inside 
the  shell  of  the  building  becomes  "marble."  It  may  look 
like  plain  cobbles  or  rough  granite  or  ordinary  limestone; 
but  under  the  rules  it's  "marble."  And  the  members  of 
the  Marble  Setters'  Union  have  to  handle  it.  What 
happened  in  this  case  has  happened  many  times  in  this 
city  and  all  over  the  country.  The  work  already  done 
was  officially  condemned,  done  all  over  again  and  officially 
accepted. 

More  than  that:  It  happens  not  infrequently  that  after 
a  quantity  of  marble — real  marble,  that  is — has  been 


40     THE  PUBLIC  REFUSES  TO  PAY 

placed  in  a  building  and  actually  "set,"  if  the  marble 
setters  discover  that  the  marble  was  not  cut  under  con- 
ditions satisfactory  to  the  marble  cutters  and  according 
to  their  rules,  then  this  marble  must  be  condemned,  cut 
out  and  thrown  out,  and  other  marble  substituted. 

The  expense  does  not  matter.  The  rules  at  all  odds 
must  be  saved. 

Article  12  of  the  rules  of  Local  Union  12  of  the  United 
Association  of  Plumbers  reads  thus:  "All  piping  apper- 
taining to  plumbing  shall  be  done  and  cut  by  members 
of  the  United  Association  by  hand  power  on  the  job." 
Now  there  are  two  ways  to  cut  and  thread  ordinary  pipe 
for  a  building  in  course  of  construction.  The  first  is  fast, 
efficient,  economical.  The  second  is  slow,  deficient,  ex- 
pensive. The  quicker  and  cheaper  way  would  be  to  send 
a  young  engineer  or  master  plumber  from  shop  or  office  to 
make  a  rough  outline  sketch  of  the  job  to  be  done.  From 
his  sketch  with  the  simple  directions  alone  necessary  all 
the  pipe  could  be  cut  and  threaded  by  power  machinery 
and  taken  to  the  job  ready  for  placing.  But  under  the 
union  rule  this  work  must  be  done  "by  hand"  power  and 
"on  the  job."  The  union  men  must  measure  and  cut 
by  hand;  by  hand  they  must  twist  the  long-handled  die 
stock  for  threading  the  pipe.  What  could  be  done  in  the 
shop  in  twenty  seconds  takes  five  minutes  on  the  job. 
That  will  make  a  large  amount  of  difference  of  time  for 
the  entire  contract.  Only  one  excuse  can  be  offered  for 
this  rule.  "It  makes  work  and  means  more  pay."  That 
is  the  union  idea.  It  is  a  mistake.  In  the  end  it  means 
less  work  and  less  pay. 

Why  should  the  Plasterers'  Union  require  that  orna- 
mental cornices  be  "run  on  the  job"  instead  of  being  cast 
in  the  shop  at  half  the  price?  The  restriction  means  that 
all  ornamental  work  over  two  feet  square  must  be  done 
by  hand.  In  former  times  apprentice  boys  at  the  shops 
would  easily  run  these  ornamental  pieces  in  the  sheet  iron 


THE  PUBLIC  REFUSES  TO  PAY     41 

moulds  made  for  the  purpose  from  the  designs  supplied 
by  the  architect.  Some  shops  still  do  the  work  that  way, 
and  all  shops  are  prepared  to  do  it  if  permitted.  But  the 
union  plasterers  refuse  to  put  up  the  shopmade  pieces. 
Builders  could  save  a  lot  of  money  by  using  stock  designs, 
but  the  plasterers  object  to  these  also.  The  rules  say 
"by  hand"  and  "on  the  job,"  and  the  architect,  the  con- 
tractor and  the  owner  must  govern  themselves  by  these 
rules,  and  in  time  they  will  pass  along  the  added  cost  to 
the  public  that  in  the  end  foots  all  the  bills. 

A  reading  of  the  constitution  of  the  Wood,  Wire  and 
Metal  Lathers'  International  Union,  as  revised  at  the 
Toledo  convention  last  September  and  in  effect  Decem- 
ber 1,  1920,  yields  some  interesting  disclosures.  The 
lathers  seem  to  be  no  more  anxious  than  the  other  unions 
to  multiply  the  number  of  their  apprentices.  The  rule 
in  section  136  reads:  "Apprentices  shall  in  no  case  be 
admitted  into  any  local  union  of  the  L.  I.  U.  in  excess  of 
one  apprentice  to  each  local  and  one  additional  one  to 
each  ten  members,  said  apprentice  not  to  be  under  the 
age  of  16  or  over  the  age  of  21  years,  and  in  no  case  shall 
the  secretary  of  any  local  union  send  in  the  name  of  an 
apprentice  for  a  member  until  such  a  time  as  said  appren- 
tice shall  have  served  his  term  of  apprenticeship  at  the 
trade."  The  idea  seems  to  be  to  limit  the  supply  of 
efficient  mechanics. 

The  lathers  moreover  have  a  curious  provision  which 
makes  it  easy  for  the  union  to  charge  a  contractor  $100 
for  the  right  to  carry  on  his  business.  In  section  139  of 
their  constitution  they  define  a  contractor  as  "a  man  or 
firm  engaged  at  the  lathing  business  who  does  not  use  the 
tools  of  the  trade  himself  or  themselves."  That  section 
declares  that  "  all  locals  shall  have  power  to  regulate  the 
granting  of  permits  to  contracting  lathers,  provided: 
That  the  fee  charged  contractors  or  solicitors  shall  be  left 
to  the  discretion  of  each  local,  but  not  to  exceed  $100,  and 


42     THE  PUBLIC  REFUSES  TO  PAY 

the  resident  limit  cannot  exceed  one  year."  And  the 
section  then  assured  "such  contractor  "  that  he  shall  not  be 
charged  "any  higher  wage  scale  than  that  in  force  with 
local  contractors  or  solicitors." 

That  section  seems  to  mean  one  thing  and  only  one 
thing — that  a  man  or  a  firm  wanting  to  get  a  contract  for 
lathing  a  building  must  pay  the  union  for  an  annual 
permit  before  he  does  any  lathing  and  that  the  permit  may 
cost  him  $100.  This,  by  the  way,  is  the  union  that,  as 
the  Chamber  of  Commerce  Committee  said  in  its  recent 
report,  proposed  lately  to  lessen  by  one-fourth  the  amount 
of  work  that  shall  be  done  in  a  day. 

There  are  no  bounds  seemingly  to  the  arbitrary  autho- 
rity conferred  by  the  union  rules  upon  the  business  agents 
of  the  unions.  Sometimes  the  agents  apply  the  rules  in 
ways  that  have  no  apparent  purpose  except  to  emphasize 
their  authority.  For  example:  At  a  well  known  school 
some  distance  out  of  Boston  a  gang  of  men  were  at  work 
on  a  new  building.  They  came  from  their  homes  in  the 
morning  on  a  main  line  car  and  transferred  to  a  branch 
line.  But  the  schedule  was  bad  for  the  return  trip  in  the 
evening.  Therefore,  merely  for  their  comfort,  the  con- 
tractor arranged  with  them  to  cut  the  noon  hour  in  half 
and  cut  off  a  half-hour  at  the  close  of  the  day.  Thus 
they  would  catch  a  branch  line  car,  making  direct  con- 
nection at  the  junction  with  a  car  on  the  main  line  that 
would  deliver  them  at  their  homes  an  hour  earlier  than 
otherwise  would  be  possible.  And  the  walking  delegate 
"wouldn't  stand  for  it."  He  declared  the  noon  hour  cut 
against  the  rules,  and  the  men,  with  nothing  to  do,  had 
to  wait  an  hour  after  quitting  time. 

Is  there  any  possible  way  for  organized  labor  to  justify 
such  rules  as  these?  The  public  will  support  them  with- 
out question  or  murmur  if  they  can  be  shown  to  be  neces- 
sary or  beneficial.  If  these  rules  are  wrong  then  their 
abrogation  will  benefit  no  one  more  than  the  workingman 


THE  PUBLIC  REFUSES  TO  PAT     43 

himself.  He  is  the  largest  consumer  of  housing  today, 
say  some  authorities,  and  it  is  for  his  own  advantage  that 
his  labor  should  be  emancipated  from  all  unjust  restric- 
tions by  whomever  imposed,  owners,  employers  or  unions. 
It  is  the  blind  adherence  to  just  such  rules  that  has  cost 
labor  the  public  support  and  sympathy  which  once  it 
enjoyed. 

Thomas  A.  Edison,  never  to  be  suspected  of  lack  of 
sympathy  with  labor,  the  other  day  stated  the  case  in 
terms  which  every  unprejudiced  person  will  indorse: 
"I  am  not  against  the  eight-hour  day,  or  any  other  thing 
that  protects  labor  from  exploitation  at  the  hands  of 
ruthless  employers,  but  it  makes  me  sad  to  see  young 
Americans  shackle  their  abilities  by  conforming  with 
rules  which  force  them  to  keep  step  with  the  shirker.  I 
have  always  felt  that  one  of  the  principal  reasons  for 
American  progress  in  the  past  has  been  that  every  man 
had  a  chance  to  be  whatever  he  wanted  to  be.  . 
This  country  would  not  amount  to  as  much  as  it  does  if 
the  young  men  of  fifty  years  ago  had  been  afraid  they 
might  earn  more  than  they  were  paid.  There  ought  to 
be  some  labor  leader  strong  enough  and  wise  enough  to 
make  trade  unions  a  means  of  fitting  their  members  for 
better  jobs  and  greater  responsibilities." 


44      THE  PUBLIC  REFUSES  TO  PAT 

How  the  Railway  Labor  Unions 
Work  Against  the  Public  Welfare 

SOME   THINGS    THE   RAILROADS   ARE    UP 
AGAINST 

1\  EARLY  all  the  railroads  of  the  United  States  have 
some  crossings  of  the  24-hours-a-day  and  7-days-a-week 
kind,  that  is,  crossings  that  have  to  be  guarded  con- 
stantly. 

The  men  on  guard  at  these  crossings  are  often  well 
on  in  years;  many  of  them  are  minus  a  limb;  few  of 
them  would  be  able  to  market  their  labor  in  the  open 
competition  of  the  world  at  large;  they  are  kept  on  these 
jobs  partly  because  younger  and  more  active  men  would 
be  hard  to  find  for  the  service  they  render,  partly  because 
their  employers  rate  them  as  pensioners,  long-time  em- 
ployees who  have  given  years  of  toil  to  the  railways  and 
have  therefore  a  fair  claim  upon  the  roads  for  con- 
sideration. 

But  the  duties  of  these  man  are  of  the  simplest,  re- 
quiring no  special  exertion,  either  mental  or  physical.  They 
lower  the  gates  that  bar  their  crossing  when  a  train  comes 
along;  they  swing  a  lantern  or  wave  a  flag.  Often  their 
crossings  are  little  used.  They  are  comfortably  housed 
in  their  "shanties'*,  and  with  plenty  of  time  to  read  and 
smoke  and  gossip,  they  never  found  occasion  for  complaint 
under  the  old  wages  and  working  conditions.  But  what 
a  "streak  of  luck"  has  "come  their  way"  in  the  last  few 
years,  and  what  a  difference  in  the  railway  payrolls  that 
"streak"  has  made.  Thus: 


THE  PUBLIC  REFUSES  TO  PAT     45 

In  1915  two  men  kept  watch  on  a  New  England  road 
ut  one  of  these  crossings  in  twelve-hour  shifts  and  received 
each  $2.15  a  day,  or  $15.05  a  week.  The  railroad  paid 
them  together  $30.10  every  seven  days.  Then  came  the 
eight-hour  day  and  the  big  boost  in  wages.  These  two 
men  now  get  $4.16  for  every  eight  hours  of  labor.  That 
crossing  now  has  three  tenders  every  twenty -four  hours. 
The  road  now  pays  $87.36  every  seven  days,  instead  of 
$30.10.  Had  the  road  kept  the  two-shift  system  the  cost 
of  caring  for  that  crossing,  on  account  of  the  punitive 
charges  for  overtime,  would  be  $101.92.  The  three-shift 
system  is  cheaper,  yet  it  costs  almost  three  times  as  much 
now  to  watch  that  crossing  as  six  years  ago. 

That  is  by  no  means  an  isolated  example  of  the  problem 
the  railroads  of  the  United  States  are  up  against  today. 
Further,  to  illustrate  the  situation : 

The  women  who  clean  the  coaches  at  railway  terminals 
were  paid  in  1915  about  sixteen  cents  an  hour;  the  stan- 
dardized rate  now  prescribed  for  the  entire  country  is 
fifty  cents  an  hour,  more  than  three  times  the  earlier 
amount.  Track  laborers  in  1915  received  eighteen  cents 
an  hour;  today  their  wage  is  slightly  less  than  fifty  cents 
an  hour.  The  work  of  car  inspector  and  repairman  is 
not  highly  skilled,  but  whereas  in  1915  these  men  got  from 
twenty-three  cents  to  twenty-five  and  a  half  cents  an  hour 
for  their  services  they  now  receive  three  times  as  much, 
the  hourly  wage  ranging  from  eighty  cents  to  nearly 
eighty-two  cents. 

Also:  In  many  cases  the  wage  of  the  mechanic's  helper 
has  more  than  tripled.  Six  years  ago  he  received  from 
nineteen  to  twenty-five  cents  an  hour;  he  now  gets 
sixty-four  cents  an  hour.  The  signal  helper  who  then  got 
$1.85  a  day  now  is  well  over  the  $5  rate.  The  signal 
mechanic  has  advanced  from  a  little  more  than  $2.50  a 
day  to  more  than  $7  a  day.  Federal  crafts  workmen, 
as  they  are  called  now,  have  practically  a  standardized 


46      THE  PUBLIC  REFUSES  TO  PAT 

wage  the  country  over  of  eighty-five  cents  an  hour,  and 
in  New  England  some  roads  have  to  pay  a  little  more 
under  certain  conditions.  But  the  machinists  thus  classi- 
fied received  only  thirty  and  a  half  cents  to  thirty-four 
cents  an  hour  in  1915,  and  blacksmiths  from  twenty-nine 
to  twenty-nine  and  six-tenths  cents. 

Further:  The  freight  house  clerks  used  to  work  sixty 
hours  a  week  for  a  minimum  wage  of  $13.80;  they  now 
work  forty-eight  hours  a  week  for  a  minimum  of  $26.36. 
Girl  clerks  of  all  sorts  in  railroad  offices  must  have  a 
minimum  of  over  $100  a  month,  even  if  without  a  year's 
experience.  All  railway  lines  have  their  small  stations 
where  one  man  easily  serves  as  station  agent  and  tele- 
graph operator.  Such  men  received  in  1915  an  average  of 
about  thirty-one  cents  an  hour  in  various  eastern  states. 
Today  they  are  paid  about  seventy-five  cents  an  hour. 

These  examples  might  be  multiplied  indefinitely. 
Those  cited  are  sufficient  to  indicate  the  nature  of  the 
wage  problem  which  confronts  the  railways  of  this  country. 
In  good  faith  the  railroads  have  undertaken  to  live  up  to 
the  terms  imposed  upon  them  by  the  United  States  labor 
board  as  to  wages,  hours  and  conditions.  They  are  not 
attempting  to  evade  these  requirements.  But  even 
cursory  reference  to  the  language  of  various  official  docu- 
ments having  to  do  with  this  big  industrial  problem  shows 
some  of  the  additional  troubles  with  which  the  roads  have 
to  contend.  For  instance: 

The  Federal  Transportation  Act  which  went  into  effect 
on  March  1,  1920,  provides  that  the  Labor  Board,  dealing 
with  wages,  and  the  Adjustment  Board,  dealing  with 
conditions,  shall  be  "just  and  reasonable,"  and  shall 
consider  the  wages  paid  in  other  industries  for  similar 
work,  the  cost  of  living,  hazards,  skill,  responsibilities, 
inequalities  caused  by  previous  wage  orders,  and  so  on. 
And  yet  this  United  States  Railroad  Labor  Board  at 
Chicago  on  July  20,  1920,  when  it  made  its  wage  award 


THE  PUBLIC  REFUSES  TO  PAY      47 

retroactive  to  May  1,  practically  admitted  that  it  had  to 
do  a  hurry-up  job  and  had  lacked  the  time  necessary  for 
the  careful  consideration  of  the  provisions  imposed  by  the 
transportation  act.  Said  the  Board  in  the  report :  "  As  to 
'inequalities  of  increases  in  wages  or  of  treatment  the 
result  of  previous  wage  orders  and  adjustments',  the 
urgency  of  prompt  action  has  made  elaborate  investiga- 
tion into  these  facts  impracticable." 

Moreover,  two  weeks  ago  Edgar  E.  Clark,  chairman  of 
the  Interstate  Commerce  Commission,  at  a  hearing  on  the 
Clayton  act,  in  reply  to  the  questions  of  a  United  States 
senator,  declared  that,  in  his  opinion,  it  was  not  wise  for 
the  Labor  Board  to  standardize  the  wages  of  all  employees 
without  discrimination.  The  chairman  could  not  see 
why  women  cleaning  coaches  in  the  South  should  get  as 
much  of  an  increase  as  women  doing  the  same  work  in. 
Chicago,  because  of  the  wide  differences  in  living  con- 
ditions. Changes  in  the  cost  of  living  did  not  warrant  the 
same  additions  everywhere.  Chairman  Clark  cited  the 
case  of  colored  women  in  the  South  whose  boosts  had 
approximated  200  per  cent. 

Such  facts  surely  show  that  a  condition,  not  a  theory, 
confronts  our  railroads.  The  war  caused  all  manner  of 
maladjustments  and  serious  disruptions  of  organization. 
The  places  of  service  men  had  somehow  to  be  filled.  Now 
the  time  for  reorganization  is  at  hand.  But  as  the  result 
of  a  long  series  of  official  awards,  rulings,  interpretations, 
often  without  reference  to  each  other,  the  railways,  once 
more  under  private  ownership,  are  handicapped  heavily 
in  any  honest  effort  to  create  efficient  organizations  on 
the  basis  of  fair  wages  and  reasonable  treatment  for  all 
employees.  In  thousands  of  cases  unskilled  laborers  are 
getting  more  money  than  trained  workers.  Standardiza- 
tion means  that  a  worker  in  one  part  of  the  country  is  in 
comparative  affluence,  while  in  another  section  the  same 
job  yields  returns  that  are  less  than  ordinary.  What  the 


48     THE  PUBLIC  REFUSES  TO  PAY 

railways  want  is  genuine  examination  of  the  whole  prob- 
lem and  careful  readjustment,  that  what  was  done  in  a 
rush  under  emergency  conditions  shall  be  revised  in  the 
interest  of  fair  play  for  the  employes,  the  railways 
themselves,  and — the  public. 


A 


SIX  MEN  FOR  A    TWO-MAN  JOB 


NEW  ENGLAND  railroad  recently  had  occasion 
to  send  a  machinist  from  the  shop  in  which  ordinarily  he 
worked  to  a  round  house  some  distance  down  the  line, 
there  to  do  a  certain  job.  He  was  away  from  home  in  all 
ten  minutes  less  than  28  hours.  Six  hours,  or  more  than 
a  fifth  of  that  time,  was  spent  in  travel  in  a  passenger  coach. 
Seven  hours  and  twenty  minutes,  or  more  than  a  fourth  of 
the  time,  was  spent  off  duty  at  the  round  house.  The  actual 
working  time  was  14^  hours,  which  is  a  half -hour  more  than 
hah*  the  total  time  of  absence  from  home.  The  railroad  paid 
the  machinist  $28.88,  $1  an  hour  for  the  whole  time,  or  about 
$2  an  hour  for  the  actual  time  spent  in  labor. 

Cases  of  this  kind  are  not  rare  these  days.  For  in- 
stance: A  certain  New  England  railway  a  short  time  ago 
sent  a  man  by  passenger  train  three  hours  away  from  the 
railway  shop  in  his  home  town  to  do  some  repair  work. 
He  left  on  a  Saturday  morning  and  returned  on  the  follow- 
ing Monday  afternoon,  having  been  absent  a  few  minutes 
less  than  52  hours.  He  spent  six  hours  on  the  trains,  and 
12  hours  besides  off  duty.  The  actual  working  time 
counted  up  to  34  hours,  or  slightly  less  than  two-thirds  of 
the  entire  time.  His  pay  envelope  brought  him  for  that 
trip  $67.68,  which  figures  out  again  at  about  $2  an  hour 
averaged  for  the  working  time,  and  about  $1.30  an  hour 
for  the  whole  absence. 

These  are  typical  illustrations  of  the  way  the  standard- 
ization of  working  conditions  operates  every  day  on  all 
the  railway  lines  of  the  country.  For  example: 


THE  PUBLIC  REFUSES  TO  PAY     49 

An  Ohio  Valley  road  not  long  ago  had  to  send  five 
machinists  101  miles  from  A  to  B.  Each  man  worked 
eight  hours  a  day  for  three  days;  each  man  was  paid  not 
for  24  hours*  work  but  for  72  hours  of  time,  most  of  it 
at  the  time-and-a-half  rate.  Each  man  received  $30 
for  his  24  hours  of  labor,  and  $52  in  addition,  and  for  the 
latter  sum  he  had  rendered  no  service  whatever. 

An  engine  some  days  ago  was  about  to  start  a  run  on  the 
El  Paso  &  Southwestern  line  when  it  was  noticed  that  a 
window  pane  in  the  cab  was  broken.  The  sky  looked 
threatening  and  the  engineer  insisted  on  repairs.  No 
engine  carpenter  being  then  on  duty,  a  foreman,  who 
himself  could  have  done  the  work  in  a  few  minutes,  had 
to  send  for  the  "right  man."  The  train  was  held  up  an 
hour  and  a  half;  the  "right  man"  did  the  work  in  a  half- 
hour  and  pulled  down  pay  for  five  hours. 

Or  consider  this  case  on  the  Atchison,  Topeka  &  Santa 
Fe  last  August.  The  line  investigated  a  difference  be- 
tween a  car  foreman  and  a  car  repairer.  The  inquiry  was 
asked  for  by  a  workman  and  consumed  82  minutes  more 
than  his  regular  working  time.  He  entered  a  claim  for 
time-and-a-half  pay  for  60  minutes  of  that  overtime,  and 
for  five  hours'  pay  for  the  other  22  minutes,  and  he  was 
paid  for  six  hours  and  30  minutes  instead  of  82  minutes. 

Further  to  illustrate:  The  rules  under  which  the  rail- 
roads now  operate  are  so  framed  as  to  multiply  the  num- 
ber of  men  who  must  be  used  to  do  the  work  a  clever 
tinker  of  the  kind  that  abounds  in  New  England  could 
do  alone. 

A  headlight  generator  is  to  be  removed  and  replaced — 
an  electrician  disconnects  the  wires,  a  sheet  metal  worker 
disconnects  the  pipes,  a  machinist  unbolts  and  removes  the 
generator  and  applies  a  new  one,  the  sheet  metal  man  then 
reconnects  the  pipes  and  the  electrician  reconnects  the 
wires;  each  man  usually  has  a  helper,  making  six  men  in 
all  for  what  one  machinist  and  one  helper  could  easily  do. 


50     THE  PUBLIC  REFUSES  TO  PAY 

A  leak  in  a  boiler  is  to  be  looked  after — a  sheet  metal 
worker  loosens  the  jacket,  a  locomotive  carpenter  loosens 
the  "lagging,"  a  boiler  maker  caulks  the  leak,  and  then 
the  others  return  to  replace  the  parts  that  fall  within  the 
carefully  limited  areas  of  their  jobs;  six  men  again  on  a 
trivial  task. 

A  boiler  check  is  to  be  changed — one  man  could  do  it 
apparently,  but  at  least  two  men  do  do  it;  a  sheet  metal 
worker  does  the  disconnecting,  a  machinist  removes  the 
old  and  applies  a  new  check,  and  the  sheet  metal  man  does 
the  reconnecting. 

A  Baltimore  &  Ohio  engine  lately  went  to  the  shops 
for  certain  repairs;  members  of  five  crafts  had  to  do  parts 
of  the  work,  formerly  members  of  two  crafts  did  it 
equally  well.  And  so  through  the  whole  gamut  of  rail- 
way division  of  labor. 

If  the  men  dismantling  an  old  car  use  an  acetylene 
torch  they  must  be  paid  at  mechanics'  rates;  in  one  case 
that  cost  a  railroad  $6421  more  than  such  jobs  usually 
cost.  If  a  car  cleaner  makes  trifling  repairs  on  a  coach 
he  must  be  paid  the  mechanics'  scale  as  the  rules  now 
are. 

In  general — the  operation  of  one  rule  compelled  the 
railroads  to  pay  in  the  first  six  months  of  1920  almost 
$6,500,000  for  work  that  was  not  done.  This  punitive 
payment  was  on  account  of  a  clause  providing  that  when 
employes  are  required  to  check  in  and  out  on  their  own 
time  they  are  to  be  paid  each  week  one  hour  extra.  For 
the  later  months  of  the  year  recent  additions  will  make  such 
payments  larger  still.  Other  rules  punish  the  railways 
as  badly.  For  instance,  if  a  discharged  employe  is  held 
to  have  been  unjustly  treated  he  must  not  only  be  re- 
instated but  given  full  pay  for  the  entire  time  of  his  se- 
paration from  the  road,  no  matter  if  in  the  interval  his 
earnings  have  equalled  his  ordinary  wage,  thus  making  it 
'(.  ossible  for  him  to  double  his  income. 


THE     PUBLIC     REFUSES     TO     PAT  51 

Now  all  these  examples  are  cited,  not  so  much  to  show 
what  wage  rates  the  railroads  have  to  pay  today,  but 
more  to  show  how  the  rates  are  applied  and  what  are  the 
conditions  of  employment.  A  simple  statement  makes 
this  situation  clear:  The  Adamson  law  established  the 
eight-hour  day  as  the  basis  for  fixing  wages  without 
limiting  the  hours  of  labor  to  eight.  The  Hours  of  Service 
Act  limited  continuous  labor  to  sixteen  hours.  As  every- 
body knows,  in  the  nature  of  the  industry  it  often  is 
necessary  for  railway  men  to  work  more  than  eight  hours 
a  day.  The  railroad  brotherhoods  demanded  time  and 
a  half  for  overtime,  that  is  for  all  work  beyond  eight  hours 
a  day.  The  railways  under  private  operation  refused  the 
demand;  under  federal  control  it  was  granted,  and  that 
provision  is  now  in  effect.  The  result  is  a  standardiza- 
tion of  working  conditions  throughout  the  United  States, 
the  application  of  punitive  charges  for  unavoidable  over- 
time, the  imposition  of  the  same  wage  for  the  same  work 
whether  done  in  New  England  or  Arizona,  in  densely 
populated  Connecticut  or  in  sparsely  settled  Montana, 
in  Chicago,  where  living  costs  are  high,  or  in  Maine,  where 
they  are  comparatively  low. 

As  things  are  today,  railroad  workers  tend  to  become 
a  privileged  class  immune  from  the  conditions  that  affect 
other  classes  of  labor.  How  could  it  be  otherwise,  for 
instance,  when  a  green  stenographer  right  out  of  school 
has  to  be  paid  under  the  rules  almost  twice  what  her 
sister  receives  in  commercial  offices  everywhere?  The 
Labor  Board  awarded  the  present  rates  on  July  20,  1920, 
and  based  the  scale  upon  statistics  of  the  preceding  March, 
when  the  cost  of  living  and  the  wages  in  other  industries 
were  at  the  highest  war  levels.  Since  then  the  cost  of 
living  has  been  coming  down  and  the  whole  tendency  in 
the  industrial  world  is  toward  a  lowering  of  wages.  If 
railway  wages  stay  up  and  other  things  come  down  the 
railway  worker  will  have  an  unfair  and  unjust  advantage 


52     THE  PUBLIC  REFUSES  TO  PAY 

over  all  his  fellow-workers,  and  the  public,  as  always, 
will  pay  the  bill.  In  the  general  process  of  deflation  now 
going  on  every  industry  and  all  classes  ought  to  help. 

Under  federal  control  the  railway  men  secured  standard 
agreements  for  every  phase  of  every  conceivable  situation, 
as  the  above  illustrations  indicate.  The  Labor  Board 
has  said  that  these  agreements  shall  continue  until  the 
Board  has  an  opportunity  to  consider  them.  The  rail- 
road executives  now  in  Chicago  are  asking  the  Board  to 
reconsider  and  rescind  these  agreements  by  which  millions 
are  exacted  from  the  roads,  and  ultimately  from  the  public, 
for  which  no  service  whatever  is  performed,  or  a  service 
whose  value  is  enormously  inflated. 


"RIDICULOUS"— WILLIAM  H.   TAFT 


i 


S  a  young  woman  who  cleans  and  polishes  the  brass 
work  of  passenger  coaches,  while  the  cars  are  going  through 
the  railway  paint  shops,  to  be  classified  as  a  mechanic  or 
not?  If  not,  she  receives  523/£  cents  an  hour  for  her 
labor.  If  she  is  so  rated,  she  must  be  paid  85  cents  an 
hour,  which  makes  a  difference  of  62  per  cent,  or  $2.60 
a  day. 

This  is  not  merely  a  hypothetical  case.  Such  a  young 
woman  in  a  New  England  railroad  shop  in  1917  was  clean- 
ing brass  at  22  cents  an  hour.  Presently  the  railway 
wage  award  lifted  her  compensation  to  52j^  cents.  She 
was  entirely  satisfied.  Then  the  shop  committee,  with- 
out her  authorization,  declared  hers  to  be  a  mechanic's 
job  and  obtained  her  reclassification  and  a  wage  of  68  cents 
an  hour.  At  the  same  time  she  was  awarded  $227.75 
as  back  pay  at  the  new  rate.  Later  still  another  Labor 
Board  increase  put  her  wage  up  to  85  cents  an  hour — 
about  four  times  what  she  received  in  1917. 

If  a  man  turns  a  valve  and  "starts  the  juice,"  and  shuts 
off  the  current  by  turning  the  valve  again,  is  he  to  be 


THE     PUBLIC     REFUSES     TO     PAY  53 

classified  as  an  electrician?  Even  though  he  is  entirely 
ignorant  of  electrical  machinery?  New  England  railways 
have  found  that  the  answer  to  this  question  also  involves  a 
big  difference  in  wages.  So  have  the  roads  all  over  the 
United  States. 

In  certain  railway  shops  here  in  New  England  three 
stationary  engineers — not  locomotive  engineers — are  em- 
ployed in  the  power  house.  Two  men  could  do  the  work, 
but  it  is  cheaper  to  use  three  and  avoid  the  time-and-a- 
half  charge  for  overtime.  Usually  the  shop  runs  but  eight 
hours  a  day,  but  the  pumps  have  to  be  cared  for  and  a 
small  dynamo  for  lighting  purposes.  Forthwith  the  shop 
committee  demanded  that  these  men  be  classified  "as 
electricians  and  paid  as  such.  In  back  pay  at  the  new 
rate  they  received  respectively  $1825,  $1861  and  $993. 
It  costs  the  company  to  operate  that  power  house  nearly 
three  times  as  much  a  month  as  in  1917.  In  the  same 
manner  the  Pere  Marquette  railroad  lately  had  to  pay 
three  employes  $9333 — they  had  been  "pumpers,"  they 
became  "electricians.**  Their  services  now  cost  the  line 
more  than  the  value  of  all  water  pumped  and  all  current 
generated  at  the  station. 

These  cases  illustrate  why  it  is  that  the  railways  of  the 
country  have  been  asking  the  United  States  Railroad 
Labor  Board  to  abrogate  the  agreements  that  make  such 
conditions  possible.  These  agreements  have  nothing 
whatever  to  do  with  the  amount  per  hour  that  is  paid  any 
employe  according  to  his  classification,  once  that  classi- 
fication is  established.  The  railroads  have  not  asked  for 
any  changes  in  basic  wages.  They  have  asked  for  changes 
in  the  working  conditions  which  are  covered  by  these 
national  agreements. 

How  did  these  agreements  come  into  existence? 

When  the  government  took  over  the  railways  for  war 
purposes  the  federal  administration,  as  is  well  known, 
raised  wages  greatly.  But  the  labor  leaders,  having 


54     THE  PUBLIC  REFUSES  TO  PAY 

obtained  these  huge  lifts  in  wages  and  the  standardization 
of  all  wages  for  the  whole  United  States,  undertook  also 
to  obtain  a  standardization  of  working  conditions.  They 
achieved  this  end  through  what  was  called  the  national 
agreements.  One  was  signed  as  late  as  October  19, 1919. 
Another  received  the  necessary  signatures  barely  six 
days  before  the  roads  came  back  under  private  control 
last  April.  The  Esch-Cummins  act  requires  these 
agreements  to  remain  in  effect  until  they  are  set  aside 
by  the  United  States  Railway  Labor  Board,  the  board 
which  a  few  days  ago  in  Chicago  refused  to  set  them  aside 
"  immediately." 

However,  there  was  not  time  before  the  lines  were 
turned  back  for  all  working  conditions  to  be  standardized. 
These  national  agreements  do  not  now  cover  all  classes  of 
railroad  labor.  But  so  heavy  is  the  charge  which  the 
agreements  now  in  effect  do  impose  upon  the  roads,  and 
so  enormous  is  the  number  of  employes  whom  it  does  in- 
volve and  so  many  are  their  classifications,  that  the  roads 
have  been  asking  the  board  to  rescind  the  agreements  and 
permit  each  road  to  deal  directly  with  its  own  employes, 
as  was  done  before  the  war.  Labor,  on  the  other  hand,  is 
insisting  not  only  that  the  present  agreements  be  con- 
tinued but  that  they  be  extended  to  cover  all  the  re- 
maining classes  of  railroad  labor. 

These  agreements  dealing  with  working  conditions  are 
concerned  with  all  manner  of  local  arrangements,  besides 
the  classification  problem,  the  time-and-a-half  charge 
for  all  hours  of  overtime  work,  "waiting  time"  at  points 
away  from  home,  and  the  like.  Under  standardization 
local  conditions  are  ignored.  Minnesota  and  Louisiana, 
Maine  and  Oregon,  the  Arizona  desert  and  densely 
populated  New  Jersey,  all  fare  alike.  Further  to  illustrate 
the  situation : 

Few  of  the  millions  who  use  the  railroads  every  day 
understand  how  "enginemen" — locomotive  engineers  and 


THE     PUBLIC     REFU-SES     TO     PAY  55 

firemen — are  paid.  The  rule  is  that  100  miles  or  less  or 
eight  hours  or  less  shall  constitute  a  day's  work  in  freight 
service,  100  miles  or  less  or  five  hours  or  less  in  passenger 
service.  The  base  is  computed  in  miles.  But  if  the 
hours  work  out  better  for  the  enginemen  their  pay  is 
computed  accordingly.  Both  overtimage  and  over- 
mileage  count  for  the  men.  The  "day"  begins  when 
the  fireman  or  engineer  reports  at  the  engine  house  for 
duty.  If  at  the  end  of  the  regular  hours  he  is  still  at 
work  he  receives  time-and-a-half  for  the  extra  hours  until 
his  job  is  done,  no  matter  how  many  miles  he  may  have 
traveled  during  the  regular  hours. 

A  certain  New  England  line  has  one  run  of  precisely 
200  miles.  The  engineer's  time  from  reporting  for  duty 
until  arrival  at  the  end  of  the  run  is  8  hours  and  10  minutes. 
But  he  has  run  200  miles.  Therefore,  he  must  get  and 
does  get  two  days'  pay.  The  exact  amount  depends  upon 
the  weight  of  the  engine  he  drives.  The  minimum  is 
$5.60.  He  receives  double  that  for  this  run,  or  $11.20. 
He  goes  "up"  one  day  and  comes  back  the  next  and  so 
shuttles  over  his  200-mile  line  through  a  six-day  week, 
and  his  pay  envelope  contains  $67.20.  So  it  is  one  thing 
to  hear  that  an  engineer's  pay  is  $5.60  a  "day"  and  quite 
another  to  know  what  he  receives  a  week. 

Another  New  England  railroad  has  a  run  of  165  miles. 
The  fireman  does  the  run  in  four  hours.  The  engine  is 
heavy  enough  to  make  the  day's  pay  $6.50.  Under  the 
rule  he  gets  $6.50  for  100  miles  and  $10.90  for  the  run. 
He  lays  over  awhile  and  then  fires  another  engine  back, 
making  another  165  miles  and  another  $10.90.  Three 
trips  a  week  net  him  $65.40. 

>>Or,  here  are  the  freight  enginemen  on  another  New 
England  road.  Over  a  certain  85-mile  run  the  through 
freights,  which  are  supposed  to  make  no  stops  for  set-offs 
or  pick-ups,  score  varying  times  depending  on  the  number 
of  trains  ahead,  the  weather  and  other  conditions.  If  the 


56  THE     PUBLIC     REFUSES     TO     PAY 

run  takes  five  hours  they  collect  their  eight  hours'  pay; 
if  the  run  requires  ten  hours  they  get  the  day  and  time- 
and-a-half  for  two  hours  more.  And,  by  the  way,  there 
are  three  kinds  of  freight  trains,  through,  local  and  way 
freights.  If  a  dispatcher  requires  a  through  freight  to 
make  more  than  six  stops  in  a  run  it  becomes  a  local  and 
on  the  locals  the  wage  is  somewhat  higher  than  on  the 
through  freights.  A  way  freight  is  never  expected  to 
make  100  miles;  sometimes  it  covers  only  25  or  even  12. 
But  the  men  are  paid  under  the  same  rule  and  the  rate 
per  hour  is  the  highest  of  all. 

This  method  obtains  also  in  the  case  of  train  crews — 
conductors  and  trainmen.  In  the  freight  service  the 
crews  are  paid  on  the  100  miles  or  eight  hours  basis.  But 
in  the  passenger  service  the  basis  is  150  miles  or  eight  hours 
to  a  "day." 

One  more  phase  of  this  important  matter:  Here  is  a 
certain  small  station  in  a  thinly  settled  region  of  New 
England.  It  has  a  train  at  5:30  in  the  morning  and 
another  at  7:30  in  the  evening  and  between  the  two  a 
freight  train.  The  station  agent  thus  has  but  inter- 
mittent duties.  Continuous  service  is  not  necessary. 
He  goes  and  comes  and  looks  after  all  sorts  of  personal 
affairs.  In  1917  he  earned  $3.04  a  day.  To  save  money 
the  railroad  uses  two  men  at  that  station  now,  paying 
each  of  them  $4.64,  or  $9.28  for  the  two,  which  is  more 
than  three  times  what  the  chores  at  that  place  cost  the 
road  four  years  ago.  In  all  New  England  there  are 
hundreds  of  stations  that  tell  that  same  tale. 

No  wonder  that  William  H.  Taft  said  a  few  days  ago 
that  this  standardization  of  working  conditions  produces 
ridiculous  results.  Is  it  strange  that  a  former  member  of 
the  Interstate  Commerce  Commission  calls  this  system 
"unsound  and  utterly  unjust"?  And  he  added:  "The 
present  system  is  unjust  both  to  the  railroad-using  public, 
and,  because  of  the  gross  discrimination,  to  the  wage- 


THE     PUBLIC     REFUSES     TO     PAY  57 

earners  themselves.  The  artificial  standardization  of 
wages  on  a  mere  money  basis — regardless  of  money- 
purchasing  power  in  various  sections  and  of  the  quantity 
and  quality  of  service  required  of  such  employes  as  station 
agents  and  freight  handlers  in  large  over-worked  sections 
as  compared  with  small  stations  in  which  the  business  is 
limited  to  two  or  three  hours  a  day — cannot  be  justified." 

TWO  YEARS  TO  FIGURE  OUT  THE  BACK  PAY 

JT  7  o'clock  tomorrow  morning  a  short  passenger 
train  will  start  from  a  certain  small  town  in  New  England 
to  make  a  leisurely  run  of  sixty  miles  over  a  branch  line 
to  the  point  where  it  joins  the  main  stem  of  the  system. 
The  train  will  reach  the  junction  at  10  o'clock.  At  that 
point  the  cars  and  the  crew  will  wait  with  nothing  to  do 
until  3  or  4  in  the  afternoon,  when  the  return  trip  will 
start.  At  7  tomorrow  evening  the  train  will  pull  into  the 
same  terminal  it  left  twelve  hours  before.  This  train 
crew — conductor,  baggage  master  and  brakeman — will 
actually  have  worked  six  hours.  The  "spread  of  their 
day"  will  have  been  twelve  hours.  But  for  making  that 
120-mile  "turnaround"  run  every  day  but  Sunday,  or 
twenty-six  times  a  month — in  February  only  twenty-four 
times— they  will  receive  respectively  $255.50,  $188.08 
and  $182.50. 

It  works  out  this  way  for  the  conductor:  "Under  the 
rules"  there  exists  in  the  railway  passenger  service  a 
monthly  guarantee  that  gives  him  a  thirty-day  month 
no  matter  how  many  days  they  may  actually  be  on  duty. 
Specifically  the  rule  is  based  upon  some  clauses  in  an 
article  in  "Supplement  25"  to  "General  Order  27." 
Conductors  are  entitled  to  a  wage  of  $7  a  day.  The 
guarantee  of  a  thirty-day  month  brings  him  a  minimum 
of  $210.  But  the  twelve-hour  "spread"  adds  in  over- 
time enough  to  make  the  wage  for  each  working  day 


58  THE     PUBLIC     REFUSES     TO     PAT 

$8.75.  For  the  twenty-six  working  days  therefore  he 
must  have  $227.50.  But — there  is  a  difference  of  four 
days  between  the  actual  working  time  and  the  thirty-day 
month  of  the  guarantee.  Add  hi  then  four  times  $7  for 
those  days  and  you  reach  the  grand  total  of  $255.50. 

This  is  not  an  isolated,  and  it  is  an  actual  case.  All 
the  New  England  roads  have  such  branch  lines,  some  of 
them  longer  than  sixty  miles,  others  shorter,  upon  which 
the  rules  operate  precisely  in  the  manner  described. 

Some  weeks  ago  a  railway  repair  man  made  a  trip  over 
his  line  at  the  road's  expense  on  an  assignment  to  repair 
a  motor  car.  He  spent  several  hours  on  the  train,  fixed 
the  car,  and  took  another  train  back  home.  In  all  he  was 
away  from  his  home  station  twenty-seven  hours,  of  which 
three  hours,  or  one-ninth  of  the  time,  were  spent  hi  actual 
labor.  His  pay  envelope  contained  $32.73  as  his  due 
"under  the  rules"  for  that  job.  Another  case  of  exactly 
the  same  nature  kept  the  employe  away  from  home  thirty- 
two  hours;  one-sixteenth  of  the  time,  or  two  hours, 
sufficed  to  fix  the  car;  the  workman  "under  the  rules" 
got  his  expenses  and  $38.25  for  that  task. 

On  New  England  roads  also  occurred  these  cases:  A 
few  months  ago  a  repairman  spent  twenty-one  hours  away 
from  his  home  station.  He  did  his  work  hi  four  hours. 
He  drew  for  the  trip  $23.76.  Another  man  consumed  six 
hours  in  repairing  a  pump  and  twenty  hours  in  all  away 
from  his  base.  The  rules  allowed  him  $25.56.  Yet 
another  workman  received  $28.08  for  repairing  a  stand- 
pipe,  having  been  absent  from  the  home  station  twenty- 
seven  hours,  and  worked  one  day  even,  or  eight  hours. 
Things  like  this  abound  not  only  in  New  England,  but 
all  over  the  land.  Before  the  United  States  Labor  Board 
in  Chicago  some  days  ago  a  western  line  presented  this 
case:  A  man  traveled  to  an  outside  terminal,  slept  there, 
did  some  labor,  and  traveled  back.  He  claimed,  "under 
the  rules,"  time-and-a-half  and  double  time  for  overtime 


THE  PUBLIC  REFUSES  TO  PAY     59 

for  the  period  of  his  absence  from  his  home  station.  He 
actually  worked  one  hour;  the  company  paid  him  $34.84. 
These  sums  are  collected  under  the  "  agreement  between 
the  United  States  railroad  administration  and  the  railway 
employes'  department  of  the  American  Federation  of 
Labor."  Rule  6  of  this  agreement  reads  thus:  "All 
overtime  .  .  .  outside  of  bulletin  hours,  up  to  and 
including  the  sixteenth  hour  of  service  in  any  one  twenty- 
four  hour  period,  computed  from  the  starting  time  of  the 
employe's  regular  shift,  shall  be  paid  for  at  the  rate  of 
time-and-a-half  and  thereafter  at  the  rate  for  double  time, 
up  to  the  starting  time  for  the  employe's  regular  shift." 

The  computation  of  overtime  and  of  back  pay  has  come 
to  be  a  collossai  job  in  every  railroad  office  of  the  United 
States.  The  forces  of  the  timekeepers  have  been  devoted 
for  almost  two  years  here  in  New  England  and  in  all  other 
sections  of  the  country  to  figuring  out  how  much  back 
pay  the  men  are  entitled  to  under  the  terms  imposed 
by  the  railroad  administration.  On  May  25,  1918,  the 
director-general  issued  General  Order  27.  One  section 
provides  that  the  wage  increases  granted  therein  are 
effective  as  of  January  1  preceding.  Thus  at  the  end  of 
May  two  years  ago  the  clerks  who  keep  the  time  of  the 
thousands  of  railway  workers  started  on  the  back  pay  task. 

They  are  still  figuring  with  all  their  might.  Of  course, 
the  back  dues  include  the  difference  between  the  old  wages 
and  the  new  and  the  additional  amounts  assessed  for  over- 
time, and  the  timekeepers  are  enmeshed  in  a  great  web 
of  rules  and  interpretations  trying  to  figure  out  how  the 
overtime  is  to  be  reckoned.  The  whole  problem  is  about 
as  complicated  as  the  Versailles  treaty. 

There  are  fifty-seven  kinds  of  engine  service  wages, 
fourteen  kinds  of  train  service  rates,  and  five  kinds  of 
passenger  train  service  rates — and  it  is  said  to  be  possible 
for  one  man  to  get  all  five  "under  the  rules."  The  old 
boards  of  adjustment  went  out  of  existence  when  the  roads 


60     THE  PUBLIC  REFUSES  TO  PAY 

came  back  to  private  ownership,  but  their  decisions  remain 
in  effect.  Board  No.  3  made  1051  decisions,  Board  No.  2 
made  2039  decisions,  Board  No.  1  made  2276 — in  all 
5366  decisions.  Are  these  decisions  harmonious,  all 
fitting  together?  They  are  not.  Later  decisions  conflict 
with  earlier  ones,  some  decisions  conflict  with  orders  of 
the  director-general,  some  with  the  wage  awards,  and  in 
some  instances  decisions  on  the  same  question  do  not 
jibe.  No  wonder  the  timekeepers  thus  far  have  figured 
for  two  years.  They  are  required  "as  promptly  as  pos- 
sible to  ascertain  the  amount  due  in  back  pay,"  and  they 
"must  compute  the  payment  due  employes  separately 
from  the  regular  monthly  payments"  in  order  that  the 
employes  "may  know  the  exact  amount  of  those  back 
payments." 

Some  curious  things  follow  the  application  of  these  back 
payment  requirements.  For  instance:  John  Jones  used 
to  be  employed  on  a  New  England  road.  He  left  the 
service  of  his  own  free  will  and  went  into  another  business. 
He  gets  no  back  pay.  John  Smith  and  John  Robinson 
also  worked  for  the  same  road.  Smith  was  fired  and 
Robinson  was  arrested  and  sent  to  jail  for  crime.  Both 
Smith  and  Robinson  get  the  back  pay.  Their  separation 
was  "involuntary,"  and  the  requirement  is  that  those 
"who  have  been  for  any  reason  dismissed  from  the  service 
since  January  1, 1918,"  shall  get  the  back  pay.  The  only 
way  to  avoid  getting  it  is  to  quit.  Few  quit. 

One  more  illustration  of  the  conditions  that  afflict  the 
roads  today.  This  happened  on  a  western  road.  It 
might  have  happened  in  New  England,  for  the  same  rule 
binds  all  the  roads.  The  list  of  roads  runs  right  through 
the  alphabet  from  the  Alabama  &  Vicksburg  to  the 
Zanesville  &  Western.  It  often  happens  that  when  a 
New  England  line  wants  to  know  how  the  rules  interpret 
the  case  of  a  Maine  machinist,  or  a  New  Hampshire  black- 
smith, or  a  Massachusetts  sheet  metal  worker,  they  find 


THE  PUBLIC  REFUSES  TO  PAY      61 

the  rule  in  some  decision  in  an  Oregon,  or  an  Arizona  or  a 
Minnesota  case.  Local  conditions,  "like  the  flowers  that 
bloom  in  the  spring,"  "have  nothing  to  do  with  the  case." 

Now  this  western  road  had  to  pay  six  men  each  five 
hours*  wages  for  thirty  minutes'  work.  The  men  repaired 
an  engine  in  the  shops  of  the  line.  They  finished  their 
regular  day,  and  then  had  to  work  a  half-hour  longer  to 
complete  the  testing  of  the  engine.  But  the  rule  says: 
"Employes  called  or  required  to  return  to  work  will  be 
allowed  five  hours  for  three  hours  and  twenty  minutes 
service,  OR  LESS."  Thirty  minutes  is  a  good  deal  less 
than  three  hours  and  twenty  minutes,  but  there's  the  rule, 
and — pay  for  five  hours  was  demanded  and  collected. 
There  had  been  no  interruption  in  work,  but  the  extra 
half-hour  was  claimed  and  allowed  as  an  additional  shift. 

The  railroads  today  are  not  seeking  to  escape  all  pay- 
ment for  overtime  work.  But  they  are  trying  to  get  rid 
of  the  rules  which  extort  from  the  public  such  unwarranted 
over-payments  as  those  indicated  above.  They  do  seek 
to  prevent  the  payment  of  sums  that  add  up  far  into 
the  millions  for  services  that  are  not  performed  at  all. 
They  wish  to  escape  the  paying  of  wrecking  crews  for 
doing  no  wrecking,  the  paying  of  inexperienced  sub- 
stitutes more  money  than  regular  foremen  get  for  the 
same  work,  the  paying  of  thousands  in  back  pay  to  men 
who  know  no  electricity  but  who  are  classed  as  electri- 
cians merely  because  they  turn  the  valve  that  allows 
the  "juice"  to  flow — and  so  through  a  list  of  many  thou- 
sands of  similar  iniquities.  The  agreements  that  make 
such  things  possible  the  roads  want  to  have  rescinded. 
If  they  are  not  abrogated  the  public  must  keep  right 
on  paying  these  unjustifiable  bills,  said  to  amount  in 
the  aggregate  to  $600,000,000  a  year. 


THE  PUBLIC  REFUSES  TO  PAY 


WHY  THE  NEW  HAMPSHIRE  PUBLIC  SERVICE 

COMMISSION    SAID    "YES"    TO    THE 

B.   &  M. 

HE  New  Hampshire  Public  Service  Commission 
lately  decided  to  find  out  why  the  New  England  railroads 
"are  rapidly  approaching  bankruptcy"  and  in  particu- 
lar why  the  Boston  &  Maine  is  so  poor  that  it  wants  to 
discontinue  its  agencies  at  twenty-four  small  rural  sta- 
tions. The  commission  did  find  out.  It  allowed  the 
discontinuances.  The  document  containing  its  report 
is  very  illuminating  reading  just  now.  From  it  some 
of  the  illustrations  below  are  cited. 

Rule  60  of  the  national  agreements,  issued  when  the 
roads  were  under  federal  control,  requires  the  roads  to 
pay  their  employes  an  hour  a  week  extra  for  punching 
the  time  clock  "regardless  of  the  number  of  hours  worked 
during  the  week."  That  rule  cost  the  B.  &  M.  some 
$150,000  last  year. 

Rule  10  of  the  agreements  requires  men  sent  away 
from  home  to  "receive  continuous  time  from  the  time 
called  until  their  return,"  with  overtime  and  other  pro- 
visions, and  the  rate  is  to  be  paid  whether  the  men  are 
"working,  waiting  or  traveling."  "Time  called"  means 
an  hour  before  train  time.  "Return"  includes  the 
time  necessary  for  depositing  tools  in  the  regular  places. 
Here  is  a  sample  of  the  way  the  rule  works :  A  boilermaker 
is  called  at  4 :20,  takes  a  5 :20  train  at  a  certain  New  Hamp- 
shire station,  rides  an  hour  or  so,  works  from  7  to  2,  waits 
nearly  four  hours  for  a  train  back,  arrives  at  6 :50,  spends  10 
minutes  putting  his  tools  away,  and  collects  for  eight  hours 
at  85  cents  an  hour  and  for  six  hours  and  40  minutes  at  $1.27 
an  hour,  making  $15.30  for  the  "day." 

Rule  7  requires  that  an  employe  "called  or  required 
to  return  to  work"  shall  be  "allowed  five  hours  for  three 


THE  PUBLIC  REFUSES  TO  PAT      63 

hours  and  20  minutes'  service  or  less.  Also  that  he 
"shall  be  required  to  do  only  such  work  as  held  or  called 
for."  Under  that  rule  cases  of  this  kind  are  occurring 
frequently  on  all  the  railways:  A  machinist  is  called 
after  his  day  is  over  to  do  a  bit  of  tinkering  on  a  locomotive. 
He  does  the  job  in  30  minutes  or  less.  Another  loco- 
motive is  at  hand  also  needing  some  small  attention. 
The  man  on  the  spot  is  assigned  to  that  job  also.  It 
takes  another  half-hour.  In  all  he  has  worked  one 
hour.  Under  the  rules  he  gets  pay  for  ten  hours. 

Rule  13  says  that  "employes  changed  from  one  shift 
to  another  will  be  paid  overtime  for  the  first  shift  of 
each  change."  The  "interpretation"  is  that  it  makes 
no  difference  if  the  workman  asks  for  the  change.  If 
a  man  on  a  night  shift  "bids  off"  a  day  shift  he  must 
have  1%  days'  pay  for  the  first  day  on  the  new  shift, 
twelve  hours  for  eight.  Such  items  run  fast  into  money 
on  a  railway  system. 

Among  the  Machinists'  Special  Rules  is  No.  64  which 
lists  a  lot  of  employes,  including  "grease  cup  fillers," 
in  such  a  way  that  the  filling  of  the  cups  may  be  done 
only  by  men  whose  rate  of  pay  is  63  or  64  cents  an  hour. 
Before  these  rules  came  a  foreman  could  designate  any- 
one he  considered  competent  to  do  this  simple  job,  and 
the  degree  of  skill  and  experience  required  for  it  surely 
was  much  below  the  $5  a  day  level.  Rule  79  assigns 
highly  paid  boilermakers  to  do  "all  drilling,"  although 
low-paid  helpers  are  quite  able  to  do  much  of  the  drilling, 
and  as  well.  Rules  4  and  5,  about  shifts  and  hours, 
prevent  the  railroads  from  having  mere  men  on  the  job 
through  the  rush  hours  than  through  the  slack  hours  of 
the  day,  with  obvious  results  upon  the  pay  rolls.  In  the 
Clerks'  National  Agreement,  Rule  26  makes  the  mini- 
mum salary  of  a  clerk  of  one  year's  experience  $4.39  a 
day,  or  $114.14  a  month  of  twenty-six  days.  The  same 
service  used  to  command  $14  a  week. 


64      THE  PUBLIC  REFUSES  TO  PAT 

Notice  also  how  the  eight-hour  day  and  time-and-a- 
half  for  overtime  affect  the  New  England  lines.  In  1915 
two  baggage  masters  served  a  certain  station  at  $2.10 
a  day  each,  or  $29.40  a  week  for  both.  Today  three 
men  are  doing  the  same  work,  one  working  six  hours 
and  getting  a  full  day's  pay.  Each  receives  $5.18  a  day; 
the  three  are  paid  $108.78  a  week.  Handling  baggage 
at  that  station  has  gone  up  in  cost  270  per  cent. 

In  1915,  also,  an  agent  and  an  assistant  did  all  the 
work  of  a  certain  station  at  a  charge  of  $3.20  a  day,  or 
$22.40  a  week.  Working  the  same  hours  today  they 
would  have  to  be  paid,  by  the  rules,  $100.10  a  week. 
By  a  rearrangement  of  hours  that  amount  could  be  re- 
duced to  $71.12  a  week,  which  still  is  more  than  three 
times  the  cost  of  six  years  ago. 

Also  in  1915  in  a  certain  switching  yard  two  switch 
tenders  covered  the  24  hours  at  a  weekly  cost  of  $37.80. 
Today  three  men  are  on  this  job,  each  receives  $5.04 
a  day,  and  the  three  $105.84  a  week,  or  nearly  thrice 
the  amount  paid  before  government  control. 

The  New  Hampshire  commission  refers  to  the  abolition 
of  piece  work  in  car  shops  as  "having  slowed  up  produc- 
tion and  increased  costs,"  and  adds  that  "under  private 
control  20  per  cent  of  the  men  in  passenger  car  repair 
shops  and  58  per  cent  of  the  men  in  freight  car  shops 
were  on  a  piece  work  basis."  The  change  went  into 
effect  in  July,  1918.  Several  roads  have  computed 
what  the  shift  from  pay-by-the-piece  to  pay-by-the-hour 
has  meant  in  decrease  of  efficiency  and  increase  of  cost. 
In  efficiency,  piece  work  car  repairers  went  down  41  per 
cent,  air  brake  repairers  33  per  cent,  passenger  car  painters 
25  per  cent,  brass  foundry  workers  11  per  cent.  By  the 
hour  system  it  takes  the  painter  almost  two  hours  longer 
to  paint  a  locomotive  and  almost  twenty-eight  hours 
longer  to  paint  a  freight  car.  On  the  hour  basis  men  bore 
two  wheels  in  the  time  they  used  to  take  for  three.  In 


THE     PUBLIC     REFUSES     TO     PAT  65 

one  boiler  shop  the  time  for  doing  work  has  gone  up 
32  per  cent  and  the  output  has  gone  down  24  per  cent, 
in  a  blacksmith  shop  the  time  is  up  35  per  cent  and  the 
output  is  down  26  per  cent.  In  a  paintshop  time  in- 
creased 42  per  cent  and  output  diminished  30  per  cent; 
in  a  passenger  repair  shop  the  time  mounted  by  32  per 
cent  and  the  work  done  slumped  by  25  per  cent,  and  in  a 
freight  repair  shop  the  amount  done  lessened  21  per  cent 
and  the  time  necessary  to  do  a  given  bit  of  work  advanced 
26  per  cent. 

And  the  New  England  roads,  of  course,  are  up  against 
the  same  back  pay  requirements  that  embarrass  all  the 
nation's  lines.  Rule  27  of  the  agreements  has  this  sec- 
tion: "In  the  restoration  of  forces,  senior  laid-off  men 
will  be  given  preference  of  re-employment,  if  available, 
within  a  reasonable  time,  and  shall  be  returned  to  their 
former  positions."  Now  a  certain  road  had  a  car  repair 
man  whose  defective  eyesight  exposed  him  and  his  fellow- 
workers  to  serious  risk.  The  company  offered  him  em- 
ployment if  any  competent  oculist  "passed"  his  vision. 
Otherwise  the  foreman  would  not  reinstate  him.  Under 
the  rules  he  was  ordered  back  and  awarded  $1000  in 
back  wages  and,  in  addition,  172J^  hours  overtime  at 
$1.02  an  hour,  for  extra  compensation  earned  by  his 
gang  during  the  time  he  was  out  of  service. 

These  examples  illustrate  some  of  the  conditions  the 
railroads  are  up  against.  What  shall  they  do?  What 
can  the  New  England  lines  do?  The  answers  that  na- 
turally come  to  mind  are  these:  Decrease  expenses. 
Increase  rates.  Or  quit  business. 

But  the  roads  can't  stop  business.  A  private  industry 
can  quit  when  it  wants  to,  or  close  down  awhile  when 
it  begins  to  lose  money.  But  a  railway  sells  transporta- 
tion of  goods  and  people.  It  receives  from  the  state  certain 
valuable  franchise  rights  and  the  law  requires  it  to  render 
its  service  until  proper  authority  relieves  it  of  the  duty. 


66  THE     PUBLIC     REFUSES     TO     PAY 

Can  the  roads  increase  rates?  The  New  Hampshire 
commission  has  some  strong  things  to  say  on  that  point. 
Since  1915  freight  rates  on  the  B.  &  M.  have  gone  up  101 
per  cent  and  passenger  charges  44  per  cent.  And  in 
that  same  period,  while  operating  revenues  have  more 
than  doubled,  the  annual  deficit  has  increased  from 
$250,000  to  $4,500,000.  The  commission,  therefore,  asks: 
"Can  the  industries  and  business  interests  of  New  Eng- 
land stand  another  rate  increase?" 

The  other  alternative  is  the  lessening  of  expenses. 
Wages  make  65  per  cent,  practically  two-thirds,  of  the 
costs  of  running  the  roads.  Materials,  fuel,  taxes,  car 
rentals  are  higher.  But  the  big  item  is  labor.  In- 
creased wages  and  overtime  and  back  pay  have  boosted 
the  pay  roll  of  this  line  from  $21,000,000  in  1915  to  $60-, 
000,000  in  1920.  Of  the  $39,000,000  increase  nine- 
tenths  is  due  to  higher  rates  and  one-tenth  to  a  gain  in 
the  number  of  men.  The  amount  the  line  shall  pay  per 
hour  to  a  woman  for  scrubbing  a  coach,  or  a  man  for 
waving  a  crossing  flag,  or  an  engineer  for  driving  a  loco- 
motive, or  a  shopman  for  fixing  a  boiler  does  not  in  the 
least  depend  on  the  prices  for  such  labor  in  any  town 
hereabouts.  All  these  things  have  been  standardized 
for  the  whole  United  States.  Local  conditions  have 
nothing  to  do  with  the  contents  of  the  pay  envelope. 
The  same  sum  must  be  paid  whether  the  work  is  done 
hi  North  Dakota  or  Texas,  down  in  Maine,  or  out  West 
in  Oregon. 

Bear  in  mind  that  the  railways  on  the  one  hand  must 
keep  right  on  doing  business,  and  on  the  other  hand, 
cannot  themselves  settle  their  freight  rates,  passenger 
rates,  or  wage  rates.  The  prices  a  road  may  charge  for 
transportation  are  settled  by  a  group  of  men  in  Wash- 
ington— the  Interstate  Commerce  Commission.  The 
amounts  a  road  shall  pay  in  wages  are  settled  by  a  group 
of  men  in  Chicago — the  Railroad  Labor  Board.  And 


THE  PUBLIC  REFUSES  TO  PAT      67 

when  a  road  states  its  case  at  Chicago  the  Labor  Board 
may  say :  "  You  don't  need  lower  wages.  You  need  higher 
rates.  Go  to  Washington  and  get  them."  And  when 
a  road  goes  to  the  I.  C.  C.  it  may  say:  "The  country 
can't  stand  higher  rates.  You  ought  to  reduce  wages. 
Go  to  Chicago  and  get  them  reduced."  So  they  "pass 
the  buck."  And  the  railroads  keep  on  accumulating 
deficits  and  closing  small  rural  stations. 

Of  course  the  New  Hampshire  Commission  says 
that  under  the  present  plan  "the  New  England  roads 
are  rapidly  approaching  bankruptcy." 

NO  WONDER  RAILROADS  DO  NOT  PAY 
EXPENSES 

CERTAIN  railroad  in  thirty-four  weeks  called 
upon  a  car  repairer  fifteen  times  to  operate  a  small  torch 
in  emergency  wrecking  work.  He  rendered  a  temporary 
service  and  the  total  time  it  required  was  well  within 
fifteen  hours.  But  under  the  national  agreements  as  to 
working  conditions,  established  while  the  federal  govern- 
ment operated  the  lines,  this  workman  made  two  special 
pleas. 

He  claimed  that  he  ought  to  be  paid  for  continuous 
service  for  the  entire  thirty-four  weeks,  although  he 
had  rendered  intermittent  service  that  amounted  to 
less  than  two  days  of  working  time.  The  board  granted 
the  claim.  He  also  asked  an  increase  of  pay  from  58 
cents  to  68  cents  per  hour.  Because  he  used  an  oxy- 
acetylene  torch  on  the  average  of  one  hour  every  two 
weeks  he  insisted  that  he  ought  to  have  the  same  pay 
that  is  awarded  employes  who  operate  welding  and  cut- 
ting torches  all  the  time.  He  got  that,  too.  Look  up 
Docket  1194  and  you  will  find  the  record  of  the  de- 
cision of  this  case  by  the  Railway  Board  of  Adjustment 
No.  2. 


08  THE     PUBLIC     E  ffi  F  U  8  £  a     TO     P  A  V 

A  certain  other  railroad  some  time  since  had  to  pay 
a  furnace  man  in  a  blacksmith  shop  1140  hours  back  pay 
for  228  hours  of  actual  work.  It  was  all  under  the  rules, 
of  course,  and  entirely  regular.  This  worker  came  in 
at  6  in  the  morning  and  spent  an  hour  getting  his  fire 
going.  From  the  time  the  furnace  was  built  in  1915 
he  had  been  getting  overtime  rates  for  that  extra  hour. 
But  by  the  national  agreements  he  entered  a  claim  for 
five  hours  overtime  for  that  one  hour.  The  Wage  Board 
granted  it  to  him.  That  decision  compelled  the  road 
to  pay  him  five  hours  extra  a  day  for  the  one  hour  of 
service,  thirty  hours  extra  a  week  for  six  hours  at  the 
furnace,  and — being  retroactive  in  its  effect — 1140  hours 
of  back  pay  for  228  hours  of  actual  service. 

Is  it  any  wonder  that  36  railroads  do  not  earn  their 
operating  expenses?  Among  them  are  the  Maine  Central 
and  the  New  York,  New  Haven  &  Hartford,  together 
with  such  lines  as  the  Erie,  the  Great  Northern,  the 
Northern  Pacific,  the  Philadelphia  &  Reading  and  the 
Hocking  Valley.  Or  that  28  other  roads  earn  expenses 
but  not  their  taxes  and  fixed  charges?  In  this  list  the 
Boston  &  Maine  figures,  and  besides  the  Baltimore  & 
Ohio,  the  Chicago,  Milwaukee  &  St.  Paul,  the  Rock 
Island  &  Pacific,  the  Missouri  Pacific,  the  Lehigh  Valley, 
the  Pennsylvania  and  the  Pere  Marquette.  These  lines 
have  100,000  miles  of  steel  rails  in  operation,  which  is 
two-fifths  of  the  entire  railway  mileage  of  the  United 
States. 

What  are  the  roads  to  do?  Labor  must  have  and  will 
surely  have  good  pay  for  every  real  service  rendered. 
But  the  entire  public  as  well  as  the  men  who  manage 
the  lines  are  becoming  impatient  of  rules  and  interpre- 
tations that  make  large  payments  for  small  service  or 
no  service  a  thing  of  ordinary  occurrence  on  all  the 
roads  in  the  country.  Notice  a  few  foundation  statis- 
tics: 


THE  PUBLIC  REFUSES  TO  PAT     69 

In  1917  it  took  303,000  skilled  workers  to  run  the 
railroads  of  the  United  States.  In  1920  it  took  440,000 
skilled  workers,  and  the  number  of  cars  and  locomotives 
had  increased  but  little. 

In  1917  the  people  who  travel  and  ship  goods  by  rail 
paid  these  skilled  workmen  $318,000,000.  In  1920  the 
people  were  paying  them  at  the  rate  of  $890,000,000  a 
year. 

For  every  two  skilled  workmen  employed  on  the  roads 
in  1917  three  are  now  in  the  service.  For  every  dollar 
the  public  paid  these  men  in  1917  the  public  now  pays 
more  than  three  dollars. 

In  1917  only  350,000  section  men  and  unskilled  laborers 
cared  for  the  nation's  railway  lines.  In  1920  their  number 
had  gone  up  to  376,000.  But  while  the  pay  rolls  for 
these  men  in  1917  added  up  to  $220,000,000  their  pay 
rolls  today  amount  per  year  to  $476,000,000. 

The  lines  today  employ  38  such  men  for  every  35  of 
three  years  ago,  but  the  roads  pay  them  today  $24  for 
every  $11  paid  them  in  1917. 

In  1917  the  railroad  offices  used  184,000  clerks;  at 
the  end  of  1920  with  business  about  normal  the  roads  were 
using  something  under  239,000  clerks.  The  pay  enve- 
lopes of  these  clerks  contained  in  1917  more  than  $189,- 
000,000  a  year;  they  are  paid  now  at  a  rate  per  year 
of  $399,000,000.  The  roads  now  need  17  men  to  do 
about  the  same  amount  of  work  as  13  men  did  three 
years  ago,  but  the  public  pays  for  practically  the  same 
service  $19  now  for  every  $9  then. 

In  1917  before  government  control  the  entire  pay 
roll  of  all  the  railroads  in  the  country  footed  up  to  $1,- 
739,482,142.  That  wage  bill  in  1920  had  more  than 
doubled,  reaching  a  grand  total  of  about  $3,610,000,000. 
The  1921  pay  roll  is  likely  to  go  well  over  the  two  billions 
mark. 

One  more  of  these  statistical  facts — In  1917  the  rail- 


70      THE  PUBLIC  REFUSES  TO  PAY 

roads  figured  their  total  operating  expenses  at  $2,860,- 
000,000.  Thus,  it  costs  far  more  for  wages  alone  today 
than  the  total  expenses  of  operation  three  years  ago. 


WAGES  ARE  ONE  THING;  EARNINGS  ANOTHER 


i 


N  1917  a  Boston  business  man  paid  37  cents  to  ship 
100  pounds  of  shoes  by  freight  from  this  city  to  Phila- 
delphia. Today  the  labor  cost  alone  is  37  cents.  That 
is,  the  railway  freight  charge  is  made  up  of  several  items, 
of  which  the  largest,  the  labor  cost,  is  precisely  what 
the  whole  cost  of  the  shipment  was  four  years  ago. 

In  1917  a  Lowell  business  man  paid  $1  to  ship  100 
pounds  of  dry  goods  from  his  city  by  freight  to  Seattle 
on  the  Pacific  Coast.  Today  that  business  man  must 
pay  labor  alone  $1.04  for  that  shipment,  to  say  nothing 
of  the  other  costs  of  the  service. 

In  1917  a  Hartford  business  man  paid  55.9  cents  to 
ship  100  pounds  of  typewriters  by  freight  from  the  Con- 
necticut city  to  Cleveland,  O.  Today  the  labor  cost 
of  that  shipment  is  60  cents  flat,  and  the  Hartford  shipper 
finds  his  freight  rate  proportionally  higher. 

In  1917  the  whole  charge  for  the  shipment  of  a  bushel 
of  wheat  from  Kansas  to  New  York  City  was  27  cents. 
Today  27  cents  pays  the  labor  costs  alone  of  that  shipment. 

In  1917  copper  came  from  Anaconda,  Mont.,  to  New 
York  City,  at  the  rate  of  50J4  cents  for  each  100  pounds. 
Today  to  ship  100  pounds  of  copper  over  that  same 
route  costs  for  labor  alone  4J^  cents  more  than  the  entire 
charge  of  four  years  ago,  that  is  55  cents. 

The  increased  wages  of  railway  labor  thus  are  added 
into  the  costs  of  travel  and  traffic  upon  all  the  railways 
of  the  United  States.  All  these  charges  ultimately  are 
paid  by  the  public,  the  people  who  use  the  roads,  who 
buy  the  transportation  which  the  railways  have  to  sell. 


THE  PUBLIC  REFUSES  TO  PAY     71 

Just  what  these  increased  labor  costs  are  in  the  case 
of  one  of  the  vital  circulatory  systems  of  New  England 
is  shown  by  the  report  rendered  March  21,  by  the  New 
York,  New  Haven  &  Hartford  to  the  Interstate  Com- 
merce Commission.  It  is  true,  of  course,  that  the  I.  C.  C. 
has  nothing  to  do  with  the  establishment  of  the  rates 
of  pay  of  railway  employes;  that  function  belongs  to 
the  railway  Labor  Board  at  Chicago.  But  for  its  own 
information  and  use  in  the  study  of  all  problems  having 
to  do  with  freight  and  passenger  rates  the  I.  C.  C.  requires 
the  roads  to  supply  the  facts  as  to  their  labor  costs. 
Also  the  commission  in  order  to  have  a  basis  for  the 
comparison  of  these  costs  on  roads  scattered  all  over 
the  continent  has  minutely  classified  all  railway  em- 
ployes and  numbered  the  classes.  When  the  I.  C.  C. 
talks  about  class  19  of  the  New  Haven  road,  or  of  the 
Denver  &  Rio  Grande,  it  refers  to  men  whose  jobs  are 
the  same — the  painters  and  upholsterers.  By  this 
standardized  classification  class  62  always  includes  cross- 
ings flagmen  and  gatemen,  whether  these  employes 
work  in  California,  Texas,  Minnesota  or  Maine.  In  all, 
the  I.  C.  C.  considers  68  classes  of  employes,  beginning 
with  the  general  officers  as  classes  1  and  2  and  ending 
with  class  68,  which  includes  all  not  rated  under  the 
other  67. 

Now  these  figures  submitted  today  by  the  New  Haven 
to  the  commission  show  that  two  classes  of  employes 
are  paid  today  more  than  three  times  the  wages  they 
received  in  1916.  That  employes  in  sixteen  other 
classes  are  paid  today  more  than  double,  and  in  some 
cases  almost  treble,  what  they  received  in  1916.  That 
the  earnings  of  the  employes  in  thirty  other  classes  have 
more  than  doubled  in  the  same  interval.  That  the 
employes  of  ten  other  classes  receive  today  from  a  half 
more  to  double  what  they  were  paid  four  years  ago. 
And  that  in  six  classes  only  have  the  increases  been 


72  THE     PUBLIC     REFUSES     TO     PAY 

less  than  half  the  earnings  of  1917.  These  six  include 
the  general  officers  and  the  division  officers.  The  former 
have  advanced  7.5  per  cent,  the  latter  44.5  per  cent. 
The  traveling  agents  and  solicitors  have  advanced 
one-third.  The  long  array  of  figures  shows  that  the 
New  Haven's  general  officers  in  all  departments  were 
paid  a  little  less  than  a  fiftieth  of  the  entire  pay  roll 
in  1916,  and  that  today  they  are  paid  less  than  a  hun- 
dredth of  the  whole  wage  outgo. 

Here  are  the  outstanding  facts  of  these  increases: 

In  1916  a  car  inspector  on  the  New  Haven  road  earned 
27  cents  an  hour,  today  86  cents  an  hour,  which  is  more 
than  three  times  what  he  was  paid  five  years  ago. 

The  engine  house  men  appear  in  the  list  as  class  51. 
In  1916  their  rate  of  earnings  was  18j/£  cents  an  hour; 
today  they  average  a  little  over  threefold  that  amount, 
or  a  decimal  over  56  cents  an  hour. 

In  1916  a  car  repairer,  listed  under  class  23,  found 
in  his  pay  envelope  28^  cents  for  each  hour  he  worked. 
His  envelope  today  averages  84  cents  for  every  hour 
of  work.  The  increase  is  slightly  under  200  per  cent. 

What  a  hostler  does  for  a  horse  an  I.  C.  C.  class  50 
"hostler"  does  for  an  engine.  He  takes  the  machine 
when  it  enters  the  "stable,"  cleans  and  furbishes  it  for 
the  next  run.  His  rate  of  earnings  in  1916  was  a  little 
over  25  cents  an  hour,  today  it  is  a  little  under  75  cents 
an  hour. 

Station  service  employes  in  1916  were  earning  a  little 
more  than  20  cents  an  hour;  today  their  rate  is  a  little 
less  than  60  cents  an  hour. 

"Road  freight  firemen  and  helpers"  received  34  cents 
an  hour  in  1916;  they  receive  98  cents  an  hour  today. 

Unskilled  laborers  in  the  employ  of  the  New  Haven 
drew  314-5  cents  an  hour  in  1916;  they  draw  833-5 
cents  today. 

The  day's  earnings  for  a  yardmaster  in  1916  were  $4.42; 


THE  PUBLIC  REFUSES  TO  PAY      73 

they  are  $9.27  today.  Policemen  and  watchmen  re- 
ceived $2.28  a  day  in  1916;  their  rate  today  is  $4.91 
a  day.  Electricians,  class  20,  earned  $2.99  a  day  five 
years  ago.  They  earn  $7.28  today.  Section  foremen 
in  the  interval  have  gone  up  from  $3.15  a  day  to  $6.23. 
Other  increases  that  appear  in  the  list  may  thus  be 
tabulated : 

Earnings  by  the  hour 

Last  Qr.  Per  cent 

Class  1916  1920        Increase        Increase 

Station  Agents,  Telegraphers      24^c          72c  47^c         194% 

Yard  Firemen  and  Helpers..       26c  71c  45c  175% 

Road  Freight  Brakemen  and 

Flagmen 32^c          89^c        57c  176% 

Road  Passenger  Firemen  and 

Helpers 47c  92^c        45^c          95% 

Road  Passenger  Baggagemen      43c  90c  47c  109% 

Road  Passenger  Brakemen    .       43c  93c  50c  116% 

These  facts  explain  the  present  situation  of  the  New 
Haven  system.  Boiled  down  to  the  shortest  possible 
statement  of  its  present  emergency  that  situation  is 
this:  In  the  year  1916  it  showed  a  balance  on  the  right 
side  of  the  ledger  of  $26,000,000;  in  the  year  1920,  with 
a  business  a  half  larger,  it  showed  a  balance  on  the  wrong 
side  of  the  ledger,  a  deficit,  of  $3,000,000. 

Here  let  it  be  noticed  that  these  ratios  are  not  com- 
puted in  terms  of  wages  but  of  earnings.  The  scales 
of  pay  will  show  figures  somewhat  lower  than  those 
above  cited  from  the  New  Haven's  official  return.  For 
there  is  a  difference  between  the  amount  a  man  must 
be  paid  under  the  union  scale  and  the  amount  he  ac- 
tually receives.  A  man  may  work  for  $1  an  hour  and 
yet  his  earnings,  averaged  over  a  period  of  several  weeks 
may  reach  a  much  larger  sum  per  hour.  A  few  examples 
not  only  will  make  this  clear,  but  they  will  also  serve 
to  illustrate  still  further  the  conditions  under  which 
the  railroads  must  operate  nowadays. 

You  employ  100  men.  You  pay  them  $1  an  hour 
for  an  eight-hour  day.  For  overtime  you  pay  them 


74      THE  PUBLIC  REFUSES  TO  PAT 

time-and-a-half,  or  $1.50  an  hour.  At  the  end  of  three 
months  you  decide  to  ascertain  what  the  earnings  of 
these  men  have  averaged  per  hour  for  the  entire  quarter. 
Some  of  them  have  had  no  excess  hours,  some  a  little 
and  others  a  good  deal  of  overtime.  Your  accountants 
figure  up  the  entire  amount  you  have  paid  these  men 
for  the  thirteen  weeks  and  divide  the  total  by  the  whole 
number  of  working  hours.  The  result  will  be  their 
average  earnings  per  hour.  Their  rate  or  scale  is  $1 
an  hour,  but  the  average  earnings  of  the  hundred  men 
will  have  been  considerably  more  than  $1  an  hour.  The 
Interstate  Commerce  Commission  asks  for  average 
earnings  and  the  New  Haven  presented  them.  On 
straight  time  a  man  gets  $8  for  eight  hours.  For  four 
hours*  overtime  he  gets  $6.  The  entire  twelve  hours 
yield  him  $14.  His  basic  wage  rate  is  $1;  his  earnings 
are  $1.16  2-3  an  hour.  That  explanation  covers  most 
of  the  supposed  discrepancies. 

But  in  certain  classifications,  especially  in  the  pas- 
senger service,  overtime  work  is  not  paid  for  at  the  time- 
and-a-half  rate,  but  "pro  rata."  What  then? 

A  conductor  brings  a  train  from  New  York  to  Boston, 
232  miles.  Including  the  half -hour  between  reporting 
time  and  starting  time,  he  is  on  duty  seven  hours.  But 
his  "day"  is  computed  not  only  in  terms  of  hours  but 
of  miles,  as  the  Herald  has  heretofore  explained,  and 
150  miles  is  a  day's  work.  He  has  completed  a  day 
therefore  when  he  is  two-thirds  of  the  way  to  Boston. 
For  the  eighty-two  remaining  miles  he  is  paid  at  the 
rate  of  3  1-3  cents  a  mile,  which  adds  $2.73  to  his  regular 
day's  pay.  His  scale  rate  per  hour  or  day  will  be  one 
thing;  to  get  his  earnings  per  hour  you  must  divide 
by  seven  the  total  amount  he  receives  for  that  run. 

Once  more — here  are  some  passenger  trainmen  who 
have  a  "turnaround".  They  start  this  morning  with 
a  train  four  hours  out;  they  wait  four  hours  at  the  city 


THE  PUBLIC  REFUSES  TO  PAY      75 

terminal;  they  make  a  return  run  of  four  hours.  The 
spread  of  their  day  is  twelve  hours;  they  work  eight 
hours.  Suppose  the  company  uses  some  of  the  mid- 
day waiting  time  and  employs  the  men  to  shift  some 
cars  a  short  distance,  to  take  a  pay  car  over  to  South 
Boston,  or  what  not.  For  that  added  service  the  men 
must  be  allowed  five  extra  hours.  They  work  twelve 
hours;  they  are  paid  for  seventeen  hours.  Their  earnings 
by  the  hour  will  average  much  more  than  the  scale  rate 
per  hour.  If  their  scale  were  $1  they  would  receive 
$17,  which  would  be  an  average  of  $1.41  2-3  for  every 
hour  of  actual  service. 

And  in  case  the  men  spend  the  four  hours  in  the  middle 
of  the  day  merely  in  waiting?  Here  emerges  the  fact 
that  the  Interstate  Commerce  Commission  requires  its 
information  in  terms  of  hours  worked,  not  of  hours  paid 
for.  These  men  actually  work  eight  hours.  If  the  scale 
rate  then  is  $1  they  get  $12  for  the  twelve  hours  credited 
to  them,  but  then*  earnings  average  $1.50  for  every  hour 
of  working  time. 

Obviously  the  thing  of  greatest  importance  is  not 
what  the  scale  awards  a  man  by  the  hour  as  a  basic  wage, 
but  what  under  the  rules  and  working  agreements  the 
railroads  actually  pay  the  men  for  each  hour  or  day 
they  actually  work.  The  I.  C.  C.  divides  the  numerous 
crafts  and  railway  workers  of  every  sort  into  sixty-eight 
classes.  The  New  Haven  takes  the  employes  class  by 
class  as  thus  divided  and  ascertains  their  average  earnings 
for  the  last  quarter  as  compared  with  their  average 
earnings  in  1916.  One  class  may  contain  seventeen 
or  170  or  1170  men.  In  each  class  earnings  per  man 
will  vary.  One  man  one  month  may  be  paid  $5  or  $50 
more  than  his  next  neighbor.  By  the  scale  all  the  men 
in  any  one  class  are  paid,  however,  on  the  common  level. 
But  under  the  rules  they  vary  in  the  amounts  their  re- 
spective pay  envelopes  contain.  The  company  com- 


76     THE  PUBLIC  REFUSES  TO  PAT 

putes  the  total  amount  paid  to  the  men  in  each  classi- 
fication and  strikes  an  average  for  the  hours  worked. 
These  earnings  per  hour  almost  invariably  amount  to 
more  than  the  scale. 

"McADOO  MECHANICS" 

CERTAIN  New  England  railroad  has  in  its  em- 
ploy an  Italian  who  handles  stone  at  a  point  a  few 
miles  out  of  Boston.  A  few  years  ago  he  was  known 
as  a  chain  stoner;  he  chained  and  loaded  stone.  The 
job  required  no  skill;  this  employer  was  simply  a  laborer. 
Then  the  road  changed  the  manner  of  handling  the  stone 
and  installed  a  40-ton  crane  at  the  quarry,  operated 
by  a  common  electric  lever.  The  laborer  had  had  no 
experience  with  a  crane  and  in  no  sense  could  he  be  con- 
sidered a  skilled  man.  But,  because  he  now  loaded 
stone  with  a  crane,  under  the  rules  he  acquired  the  rating 
of  a  skilled  mechanic  and  he  had  to  be  paid  accordingly. 

He  had  worked  a  long  time  at  48  cents  an  hour,  a  short 
time  at  50  cents.  By  the  new  rating  his  pay  went  up 
to  85  cents  an  hour.  Moreover,  under  the  retroactive 
operation  of  the  wage  award  the  railway  had  to  "adjust" 
his  back  pay  to  September  18,  1918.  That  is,  this  la- 
borer, knowing  nothing  whatever  of  electrical  machinery 
and  doing  nothing  that  any  plain  workman  might  not 
do  as  well,  is  costing  the  road  $6.80  a  day  instead  of  $4, 
and  has  received  $900  in  a  lump  sum  as  back  pay. 

The  arbitrary  definitions  and  classifications  imposed 
upon  the  roads  during  federal  control  have  produced 
curious  conditions  which  would  be  amusing  were  they 
not  so  expensive.  Director-General  McAdoo  by  his 
now  famous  supplement  No.  4,  to  General  Order  No. 
£7,  dated  July  25,  1918,  and  the  numerous  supplements 
and  interpretations  which  followed,  created  by  signing 
his  name  a  great  number  of  "skilled  mechanics."  These 


THE  PUBLIC  REFUSES  TO  PAY      7t 

men  are  commonly  called  today  "McAdoo  mechanics." 
They  did  not  become  mechanics  by  acquiring  skill  and 
experience.  They  simply  were  reclassified. 

For'finstance :  The  man  who  prepares  a  car  for  the 
repair  men,  that  is  who  takes  the  screws  out  from  the 
seats  and  racks  and  removes  the  racks  and  seats,  thus 
became  a  skilled  mechanic.  He  strips  a  car  for  repairs 
and  is  called  a  stripper.  The  rules  now  make  any  man 
who  works  "above  the  trucks"  of  a  car  a  skilled  mechanic, 
and  he  must  be  paid  accordingly.  By  that  supplement 
as  interpreted  officially  many  thousands  of  "handy"  men 
paid  before  federal  control  a  little  more  than  the  pay 
of  common  laborers  are  now  receiving  85  cents  an  hour 
and  time  and  a  half  for  overtime. 

That  supplement  No.  4  to  General  Order  No.  27  is  a 
most  complicated  document.  It,  classifies  employes  in 
the  mechanical  departments  of  the  roads  as  machinists, 
boilermakers,  blacksmiths,  sheetmetal  workers,  elec- 
trical workers  (first  and  second  classes),  carmen  and 
molders.  With  each  classification  there  are  apprentices 
and  helpers.  On  September  1  appeared  Addendum 
No.  1  to  this  Supplement  No.  4,  and  that  was  followed 
by  Interpretation  No.  1  to  Addendum  No.  1  to  Supple- 
ment 4.  Then  in  order  came  Addendum  2,  with  several 
interpretations,  and  Amendment  1  to  Supplement  4, 
and  so  through  page  after  page  of  the  official  212-paged 
book.  So  that  in  figuring  on  the  wages  of  these  classes 
of  employes  the  railway  accountants  are  dealing  for 
example  with  such  directions  as  appear  in  "Interpre- 
tation No.  8  to  Supplement  No.  4,  Interpretations  and 
Addenda  thereof  to  General  Order  No.  27." 

The  classifications  thus  made  have  multiplied  by  two, 
by  three,  by  four,  sometimes  even  by  six  the  number  of 
men  required  to  do  simple  jobs  that  could  be  done  today 
by  one  man,  or  two  men,  as  they  were  done  a  few  years 
ago.  Thus: 


78  THE     PUBLIC     REFUSES     TO     PAT 

To  produce  the  necessary  draft  in  the  short  smoke 
stack  of  an  ordinary  locomotive  steam  is  discharged 
through  a  nozzle  at  the  end  of  a  pipe  from  the  boiler. 
The  tips  on  these  nozzles  have  to  be  changed  at  times. 
Once  a  single  handy  man  could  do  that  job.  A  single 
handy  man  could  do  it  today.  But  under  the  rules 
which  now  the  railroads  must  obey  it  takes  six  men 
to  do  that  job.  The  door  at  the  front  of  the  locomotive 
must  be  opened  by  a  boilermaker,  because  this  is  the 
work  the  rules  assign  to  a  boilermaker,  and  he  must 
have  his  helper  at  hand  to  hand  him  his  tools.  The 
blower  pipe  must  be  removed  by  a  pipeman,  because 
the  rules  assign  him  that  kind  of  work,  and  his  helper 
must  hand  him  his  tools.  Then  the  machinist  and  his 
helper  may  remove  the  old  tip  and  substitute  a  new  one. 
The  pipeman  and  his  helper  having  replaced  the  pipe 
and  the  boilermaker  and  his  helper  having  closed  the 
door  again,  the  job  is  officially  completed. 

Coupling  and  uncoupling  the  hose  between  two  railway 
cars  is  not  so  hard  nor  so  dangerous  as  hitching  and 
unhitching  a  span  of  mules,  but  the  couplers  are  now 
classed  as  carmen,  they  are  paid  80  cents  an  hour,  and 
with  the  overtime  for  Sundays  and  holidays  they  average 
about  $215  a  month,  and  they  actually  work  7  hours 
and  40  minutes  a  day.  Before  federal  control  they 
received  from  28  to  34  cents  an  hour,  and  straight  time 
for  overtime,  and  their  average  was  about  $96  a  month 
for  a  10-hour  day. 

This  section  foreman  and  his  men  are  on  their  way 
to  work.  They  will  look  after  a  bit  of  track  a  couple 
of  miles  out.  Their  motor  car  takes  them  over  the  rails 
morning  and  evening.  The  car  is  simpler  than  a  farm 
tractor.  But  if  it  breaks  down  they  are  permitted, 
under  the  rules,  to  make  only  such  temporary  repairs 
as  will  enable  them  to  get  to  the  terminal.  They  could 
put  jthe  car  into  perfect  shape  again,  but  that  is  ma- 


THE  PUBLIC  REFUSES  TO  PAY      79 

chinists'  work,  and  either  a  machinist  must  come  out 
to  make  repairs  or  the  car  must  go  to  the  shop. 

A  New  England  lumberman  and  a  New  England  rail- 
road man  the  other  day  talked  over  their  respective 
labor  situations.  Said  the  lumberman:  "We  pay  our 
millwrights  from  $4.50  to  $5  for  a  10-hour  day.  These 
men  do  many  sorts  of  work.  They  repair  a  steam  engine 
or  any  part  of  the  mill  machinery,  and  do  the  tasks  of 
the  carpenter,  pipefitter,  machinist  or  blacksmith,  as 
occasion  requires."  Said  the  railroad  man:  "We  have 
no  millwrights,  so  called,  but  we  have  men  who  do  pre- 
cisely the  same  kind  of  work.  We  pay  them  85  cents 
an  hour,  and  occasionally  90  cents.  But  if  we  worked 
10  hours  a  day  they  would  get  $6.80  for  eight  hours, 
then  time  and  a  hah*  for  the  ninth  hour,  or  $1.27}^,  and 
for  the  tenth  hour,  under  the  rules,  they  would  have 
to  be  paid  for  five  hours,  at  the  regular  rate  of  $4.25. 
That  makes  in  all  $12.32j/£.  And  these  men  are  limited 
to  one  minutely  described  kind  of  work.  They  cannot 
serve  as  general  utility  men.  The  kinds  of  work  you 
mention  would  have  to  be  divided  among  five  or  six 
crafts."  "Well,"  mused  the  lumberman,  "I  don't 
wonder  that  it  costs  money  to  keep  the  railroads 
going." 

One  more  illustration  to  show  how  the  overtime  charges 
as  now  assessed  penalize  the  railroad  treasuries  and  the 
public  who,  of  course,  put  into  the  treasuries  the  money 
they  contain: 

A  wrecking  crew  at  8  in  the  morning  starts  to  clear 
up  a  wreck  some  50  miles  distant  from  the  home  terminal. 
The  crew  complete  the  clearing  of  the  main  track  at  6 
in  the  evening.  The  outfit  has  sleeping  facilities  and 
the  men  tie  up  for  the  night.  At  7  next  morning  they 
begin  picking  up  scrap  and  refuse  and  at  2  in  the  after- 
noon report  back  at  their  home  base. 

They  have  been  away  from  their  home  shop  30  hours. 


80      THE  PUBLIC  REFUSES  TO  PAT 

They  have  actually  worked  nine  hours.  They  are  paid 
for  42  hours.  Under  the  rules  it  figures  out  thus: 

For  the  first  eight  hours,  reckoning  from  their  start 
from  the  shop,  straight  time.  For  the  next  eight  hours, 
ending  at  midnight,  time  and  a  half,  or  12  hours  for  8. 
From  midnight  to  8  in  the  morning,  double  time,  or  16 
hours  for  8.  From  that  time  to  quitting  time  at  the 
home  base,  six  hours  straight. 

Included  in  that  computation  is  the  item  of  16  hours' 
pay  for  their  eight  hours  of  sleeping  time. 

Wage  wastes  of  this  kind  cannot  be  justified  from  any 
point  of  view.  No  one  possibly  can  defend  the  payment 
of  high  prices  for  work  that  is  not  done  at  all.  Or  a 
rule  that  makes  necessary  the  payment  of  85  cents  an 
hour  for  what  a  helper  could  do  as  well  for  64  cents  or 
an  unskilled  laborer  for  48j/£  cents.  There  can  be  no 
valid  reason  why  six  men  should  be  used  to  do  what 
one  man,  or  two  men,  can  do  as  well,  and  sometimes 
quicker. 

In  an  address  the  other  day  before  the  Cleveland 
Chamber  of  Commerce,  Elisha  Lee,  vice-president  of 
the  Pennsylvania  railroad,  in  charge  of  the  Eastern  region, 
said:  "Railroad  work  ought  to  be  well  paid.  It  is  im- 
possible to  overstate  its  responsibility  or  the  fundamental 
necessity  of  its  character.  Many  important  classes  of 
railroad  men  are  entitled  to  be  designated  as  the  very 
highest  types  of  American  skilled  labor.  They  are  among 
the  best  of  our  citizens."  The  public  will  agree  with  him. 

And  the  public  also  will  agree  with  Mr.  Lee  in  this 
statement:  "When  machinery  began  on  a  large  scale 
to  supersede  hand  labor  in  manufacturing  plants,  work- 
men bitterly  fought  the  change,  in  the  belief  that  if  a  ma- 
chine could  do  the  work  of  several  men  there  would  be 
fewer  jobs.  We  all  know  that  was  a  mistaken  view, 
and  that  mechanical  production  has  not  only  greatly 
increased  the  number  of  jobs  open,  but  has  paved  the 


THE      PUBLIC     REFUSES     TO     PAT  81 

way  for  the  astonishing  advance  in  standards  of  living 
on  the  part  of  all  classes  of  population,  which  has  been 
perhaps  the  most  striking  economic  feature  of  our  time. 
"Many  railroad  men  today  are  being  just  as  badly 
deceived  by  those  leaders  who  tell  them  that  by  making 
their  work  slow,  difficult,  complicated  and  expensive, 
and  insisting  upon  an  unnecessary  number  of  different 
kinds  of  mechanics  working  on  a  given  job,  the  earnings 
and  prosperity  of  railroad  employes  will  be  increased. 
That  will  not  happen  at  all,  for  various  reasons,  one  of 
which  is  that  the  public,  upon  realizing  the  facts,  will 
step  in  and  stop  it." 


"B. 


HOW   THE  GLUE  BOY  BECAME  AN 
UPHOLSTERER 


ULLY"  is  a  17-year-old  boy  employed  in  the  up- 
holstery department  of  the  shops  of  a  New  England 
railroad.  His  duties  had  consisted  almost  entirely  of 
stripping  the  plush  from  the  seats  of  passenger  coaches, 
beating  it,  and  turning  it  over  for  replacement  in  the 
cars.  He  did  no  constructive  work;  he  did  not  put 
the  plush  back  upon  the  seats.  The  compressed  air 
system  of  cleaning  was  not  hi  use  in  these  shops. 

And  then,  like  the  boys  in  the  novels,  a  fortune  dropped 
out  of  the  clouds  and  crammed  his  pockets  with  cash. 
For  he  became  a  "McAdoo  mechanic."  It  happened 
this  way: 

The  skilled  upholsterers  in  that  shop  often  were  bothered 
about  their  glue  being  "wrong."  The  glue  pots  were 
placed  in  the  openings  in  a  heater  much  as  kettles  are 
set  into  the  openings  in  an  ordinary  kitchen  stove.  Pieces 
of  chip  glue  were  dropped  into  the  pots  on  the  range  for 
melting,  and  the  upholsterers  hated  to  be  hindered  by 
glue  of  the  wrong  consistency.  So  they  turned  to  "Billy" 
for  help.  He  had  time  on  his  hands  and  liked  to  be  busy. 


82  THE     PUBLIC     REFUSES     TO     PAY 

Why  shouldn't  he  add  this  glue  pot  to  his  ordinary  duties 
and  keep  the  glue  "right"?  They  wished  the  task  on 
him  and  for  many  months  he  spent  some  time  every 
day  at  the  glue  range. 

And  then  "Billy's"  case  became  a  subject  for  official 
adjustment.  Something  in  the  rules  made  the  mixing 
and  heating  of  glue  a  part  of  the  regular  job  of  an  up- 
holsterer. "Billy"  had  no  other  connection  with  the 
upholsterer's  craft.  He  merely  kept  the  glue  hot.  But 
because  of  that  fact  the  Wage  Board  ruled  that  he  must 
be  rated  as  a  first-class  upholsterer  and  paid  accordingly. 

Of  course,  the  back  pay  rules  also  applied  to  him.  In 
his  case  the  back  pay  went  back  to  January  1,  1918,  so 
that  at  one  time  "Billy"  was  handed  more  than  $1200 
in  cash,  a  gift  from  the  railroads  by  direction  of  the 
government. 

He  is  classed  as  an  upholsterer  and  paid  as  an  up- 
holsterer, yet  he  has  none  of  the  skill  or  experience  of  an 
upholsterer.  Mr.  McAdoo  was  director-general  of  the 
railways  when  the  order  was  issued  making  such  things 
possible,  and  "Billy"  is  a  skilled  man  by  executive  fiat — 
a  "McAdoo  mechanic." 

For  several  years  "James  Brown"  has  worked  as  a 
clerk  in  a  New  England  railway  freight  office.  At  the 
time  the  government  took  over  the  control  of  the  nation's 
transportation  system  he  worked  nine  hours  a  day  and 
was  paid  at  the  rate  of  $2.25  a  day,  or  $15.75  for  a  seven- 
day  week.  Under  Supplement  7  to  General  Order  27, 
dated  September  1,  1918,  and  having  to  do  with  "rates 
of  pay  and  rules  for  overtime  and  working  conditions  for 
all  clerical  forces  in  all  departments,"  he  received  an 
increase  making  his  rate  $3.07  a  day.  Under  the  Endi- 
cott  award  of  1919  he  had  an  additional  increase  of  40 
cents,  making  his  wages  $3.47  a  day.  The  Labor  Board 
award  of  1920  added  $1.04  more  to  his  pay  envelope,  so 
that  his  daily  wage  became  $4.51,  or  $31.57  a  week. 


THE  PUBLIC  REFUSES  TO  PAT      83 

However,  "James  Brown"  was  now  working  on  a  basis 
of  an  eight-hour  day,  but  spending  nine  hours  every  day 
at  his  desk.  For  that  additional  hour  he  was  drawing 
pay  at  the  overtime,  or  time-and-a-half,  rate,  which  put 
85  cents  more  every  day  to  his  credit  on  the  books  of  the 
office,  or  $5.95  every  week.  Therefore,  the  total  amount 
paid  him  every  seven  days  now  is  $37.52  and  for  precisely 
the  same  kind  and  amount  of  service  that  he  was  rendering 
five  years  ago  at  $15.75  a  week. 

But  the  accounting  job  in  his  case  is  by  no  means  yet 
completed.  The  back  pay  has  to  be  calculated  under 
the  retroactive  feature  of  the  board's  award.  The  figures 
already  cited  are  on  the  basis  of  a  365-day  year.  The 
accountant  therefore  multiplies  the  basic  eight-hour-a- 
day  wage  of  $4.51  by  365  and  gets  $1646.15.  He  now 
takes  out  the  52  Sundays  and  the  seven  holidays,  leaving 
306,  and  divides  that  $1646.15  by  that  total  number  of 
"regular  days"  and  gets  $5.379  a  day  as  a  basis  for  the 
back  pay  calculation.  The  difference  between  $4.51 
and  $5.379  is  86  9-10  cents,  and  the  road  must  pay  "James 
Brown"  that  amount  for  every  day  covered  by  the  retro- 
active requirement  of  the  award. 

But — one  item  more,  please:  There's  that  ninth  hour, 
the  overtime  hour,  to  consider.  If  the  road  must  pay 
this  clerk  86  9-10  cents  back  pay  for  every  eight-hour  day, 
then  it  is  paying  at  the  rate  of  about  11  cents  an  hour, 
and  the  overtime  or  time-and-a-half  hour  must  go  in  at 
about  16  cents.  So  the  accountants  will  figure  back 
on  this  basis  to  January  1,  1920,  and  pay  "James  Brown" 
a  good-sized  lump  sum. 

As  a  matter  of  fact  the  operation  of  the  rulings  illus- 
trated in  this  authentic  case  is  going  to  cost  one  division 
of  a  certain  New  England  road  within  a  few  dollars  of 
$30,000  and  on  all  ten  of  its  divisions,  varying  in  size  as 
they  do,  it  will  take  $250,000  to  satisfy  these  back  pay 
charges.  That's  the  kind  of  work  that  keeps  pencils  and 


84  THE     PUBLIC     REFUSES     TO     PAY 

adding  machines  busy  these  days  in  every  office  of  every 
railroad  in  New  England  and  of  the  entire  United  States. 
This  case  of  "James  Brown"  helps  to  show  how  it  is 
that  the  railways  talk  about  hundreds  of  millions  of  back 
pay  money  that  the  wage  awards  exact  from  them. 

And  employes  are  making  sure  that  not  a  penny  of 
any  sum  due  under  all  the  rulings  and  interpretations 
and  supplements  to  "G.  O.  27"  shall  go  uncollected. 
For  instance,  consider  this  case  of  "James  Brown"  again. 
He  represents  a  class  of  men  paid  by  the  week.  We  have 
noticed  how  the  government  established  a  basis  for  calcula- 
tion by  multiplying  the  week's  wage  by  52  and  dividing 
by  306.  Recently  the  clerks  came  forward  with  a  de- 
mand for  one  more  day's  pay  a  year.  They  pointed  out 
that  you  must  add  one  to  the  product  of  52  and  seven 
in  order  to  get  the  365  of  a  full  year.  Which  is  quite 
correct,  and  indicates  how  watchful  the  employes  are  that 
no  application  of  the  complicated  accounting  system  of 
the  roads  under  the  transportation  act  shall  elude  their 
attention.  That  demand  for  the  extra  day  was  made 
not  long  ago  by  the  Clerks'  Union  of  a  New  England 
line. 

Further  to  illustrate  how  the  rules  and  the  overtime 
inflict  punitive  charges  upon  the  railroads,  and  through 
them  the  public,  owing  to  circumstances  quite  beyond 
their  control:  Here  is  the  case  of  a  mechanic  working 
at  his  regular  occupation  in  the  shops  on  a  passenger  car. 
He  has  continued  one  hour  over  the  regular  day,  so  that 
at  5  in  the  afternoon  he  has  one  hour  at  the  time-and-a- 
half  rate  to  his  credit.  He  has  just  stepped  from  the  car 
when  another  employe  pulls  the  handle  off  the  water 
valve.  The  foreman  is  on  the  spot  and  calls  the  mechanic 
back  to  fix  this  valve.  In  four  minutes  he  has  performed 
the  task.  In  two  minutes  more,  at  precisely  5.06  P.M., 
he  has  checked  out  at  the  time  clock  a  hundred  yards 
away.  All  he  had  done  in  these  four  minutes  was  to 


THE  PUBLIC  REFUSES  TO  PAY      85 

loosen  two  screws,  put  back  the  handle,  and  tighten  the 
two  screws.  Any  tyro  could  have  done  it,  only  the 
rules  wouldn't  let  him. 

And  for  those  six  minutes  the  road  had  to  pay  him  full 
five  hours.  The  reason  is  perfectly  plain  "under  the 
rules."  He  has  completed  a  day.  He  has  worked  one 
hour  overtime  at  the  half -pay  premium  for  the  first  hour 
over.  Now  he  works  six  more  minutes  and  not  a  minute 
beyond  that  extra  hour  may  an  employe  work  without 
being  allowed  pay  for  five  hours. 

Anyone  who  may  refer  to  the  shop  crafts  agreement 
so-called,  dated  September  20,  1919,  will  notice  numbers 
of  rules  that  show  how  the  railways  are  penalized  for  sums 
that  in  the  aggregate  mount  to  huge  totals.  Thus  Rule 
161  provides  that  "men  shall  not  be  required  to  work  on 
cars  taken  from  trains  to  repair  tracks,*'  which  means, 
without  going  into  the  technical  details,  that  instead  of 
being  used  to  the  best  advantage  in  repair  work  they  must 
be  paid  for  lying  idle.  And  a  study  of  Rules  2  and  12 
will  show  how  second  shifts  have  to  be  employed  which 
after  working  a  half-day  or  less  have  nothing  to  do  for 
the  balance  of  their  day.  And  in  Rules  40  and  41  one 
may  discern  how  the  labor  supply  is  restricted  by  the 
limitation  of  apprentices.  Other  rules,  six  in  all,  restrict 
the  labor  supply  of  the  roads  by  requiring  four  years' 
experience  of  an  employe,  although  he  would  be  entirely 
competent  to  do  many  things  requiring  little  skill.  And 
Rules  62,  79,  111,  226,  140,  141,  142,  143,  and  154,  the 
"classification  rules,"  work  out  in  such  a  way  that  small 
skill  is  paid  as  high  a  rate  as  high  skill,  thereby  discourag- 
ing the  ambitious  and  encouraging  inefficiency  to  be 
content  with  what  it  does  and  what  it  leaves  undone. 

The  operation  of  these  rules — that  is  one  way  the 
railway  treasuries  are  depleted  and  the  roads  forced  into 
receiverships.  The  other  has  to  do,  of  course,  with  the 
flat  increases  hi  wages.  For  instance:  In  any  railway 


86     THE  PUBLIC  REFUSES  TO  PAY 

yard  the  men  will  work  in  three  tricks,  from  7  A.  M.  to 
3  P.  M.,  from  3  to  11  P.  M.,  and  from  11  P.  M.  to  7  A.  M. 
For  the  first  trick  a  brakeman  used  to  get  $2.80  a  day,  for 
the  second  $2.88,  and  for  the  third  $2.96.  The  same 
men  for  the  same  work  now  get  $6.48  each.  The  flat 
increases  have  come  in  three  increments,  under  "G.  O. 
27,'*  and  Supplements  16  and  24  respectively.  The  same 
ratios  hold  true  all  along  the  line. 

However,  something  happened  the  other  day  in  a  New 
England  office  that  never  had  happened  before.  The 
management  wonder  if  it  ever  will  happen  again.  A  man 
30  years  in  the  service  of  the  line,  an  agent  in  charge  of  a 
small  station,  checking  baggage,  delivering  freight,  selling 
tickets,  but  doing  no  telegraphing,  came  into  the  ac- 
countant's room  with  a  bad  case  of  conscience.  He  told 
his  hours  and  his  pay.  They  were  pronounced  O.  K. 
And  he  said:  "I  thought  I  was  getting  too  much  money. 
If  I  am  entitled  to  it,  I  don't  earn  it.  It's  highway 
robbery.  You  say  I  must  take  it.  Well,  say,  could  I 
report  a  smaller  number  of  hours,  and  reduce  my  own 
pay?  Would  that  be  all  right  by  the  rules?" 


o, 


Labor's  First  Duty 


'RGANIZED  labor  today  more  than  all  else  needs  to 
emphasize  less  its  rights  and  more  its  duties. 

The  leaders  of  more  than  100  trades  unions  the  other  day 
hi  Washington  drew  up  a  "  bill  of  rights."  That  bill  claimed 
certain  "rights  "  which  no  one  disputes.  Labor  had  no  need 
to  demand  the  right  to  organize;  labor  now  possesses  it. 
Labor  had  no  reason  to  demand  the  "right  to  and  practice 
of  collective  bargaining";  labor  now  has  that  right. 

There  are  many  fair  and  reasonable  claims  that  the 
public  readily  and  unanimously  grants  to  labor.  First 
and  most  fundamental  of  these  is  the  right  to  receive  a 


THE  PUBLIC  REFUSES  TO  PAY      87 

good  day's  pay  for  a  good  day's  work.  In  the  determina- 
tion of  what  constitutes  a  good  day's  wage  many  factors 
must  be  considered — the  cost  of  living,  the  rates  paid  in 
various  lines  of  labor,  the  degree  of  experience  and  skill 
involved  in  any  work  done,  the  general  conditions  under 
which  the  service  is  performed.  Few  employers,  and 
certainly  not  the  public  as  a  whole,  have  any  desire  to 
stint  labor.  The  public  is  quite  willing  to  see  labor  re- 
ceive liberal  and  generous  treatment.  The  American 
people  believe  in  a  fair  deal  and  always  have  tended  to 
sympathize  with  the  "under  dog"  in  times  of  industrial 
clashing. 

What  the  public  objects  to  is  something  altogether 
different.  The  county  grand  jury  at  Cleveland  on 
June  9,  1920,  after  having  devoted  a  fourth  of  a  year  to  a 
careful  examination  of  the  housing  situation  in  that 
city,  declared  the  principal  reason  for  the  big  boost  in  the 
cost  of  building  was  "the  refusal  of  labor  to  do  a  real  day's 
work  in  return  for  a  real  day's  pay."  There  is  the  sore 
spot  in  the  present  situation.  Union  labor  beyond  all 
other  things  needs  to  consider  what  duty  it  owes  to  the 
community.  The  good  will  of  the  community  is  the 
greatest  asset  of  labor. 

The  public  today  reluctantly  is  compelled  to  believe 
that  unionism  stands  not  only  for  the  "rights"  lately 
emphasized  in  Washington,  but  for  a  great  mass  of  rules 
that  decrease  enormously  the  service  labor  renders  for 
the  wage  it  receives.  The  Herald  lately  has  cited  many 
illustrations  of  the  way  these  rules  work  in  the  railway 
service  the  country  over  as  well  as  in  New  England  and 
in  the  building  trades  in  Boston.  Numerous  letters  com- 
menting on  these  editorials  are  daily  received  at  this 
office,  indicating  how  intense  is  public  interest  in  all  the 
questions  at  issue.  Of  the  hundreds  of  actual  cases  cited 
possible  error  is  pointed  out  in  but  two  or  three.  Every 
day  brings  its  tale  of  personal  experience  from  some  one 


88      THE  PUBLIC  REFUSES  TO  PAT 

who  has  suffered  "under  the  union  rules."  But  one 
distinction  always  should  be  borne  in  mind — no  one 
objects  to  real  pay  for  real  service;  everybody  does  object 
to  paying  exorbitant  sums  where  no  service  or  only  slacker 
service  is  rendered. 

Many  union  rules  lessen  production  and  impair  effi- 
ciency. The  unions  strive  to  restrict  output,  to  level  all 
workers  down  and  up  to  one  dead  level,  to  limit  the  labor 
supply  by  strict  apprenticeship  rules  and  high  admission 
fees,  to  slow  up  the  speed  of  production  in  order  to  reap 
the  larger  returns  of  overtime.  The  United  States  com- 
missioner of  labor  in  his  eleventh  special  report  said: 
"It  has  been  found  that  there  is  in  the  building  trades  a 
very  general  feeling  that  by  working  slower  the  work  will 
be  made  to  last  longer."  The  report  quotes  a  rule  to 
prevent  a  foreman  "rushing  his  men."  A  carpenter's 
union  fines  "any  member  who  does  an  unreasonable 
amount  of  work."  The  unions  prohibit  the  use  of  labor- 
saving  implements,  prescribe  the  size  of  paint  brushes, 
require  "under  the  rules"  that  men  shall  receive  a  dollar 
an  hour  day  and  night  for  doing  what  does  not  need  to  be 
done  at  all,  compel  the  employment  of  skilled  men  for 
duties  that  ordinary  unskilled  men  could  do  as  well,  and 
here  in  Boston  double  time  for  overtime  which  directly 
invites  the  worker  to  shirk  through  the  regular  hours. 
One  of  the  most  excessive  demands  we  have  noticed  was 
that  of  the  building  trades  in  Cleveland,  where  they  are 
said  to  have  announced  in  the  newspapers  their  intention 
to  erect  no  buildings  to  be  occupied  by  individuals  or  firms 
not  approved  by  union  labor. 

Undoubtedly  large  numbers  of  workers  themselves  see 
the  iniquity  of  these  rules,  realize  the  damage  they  are 
doing  the  whole  union  cause,  and  understand  the  injury 
they  work  upon  the  community  as  a  whole.  Such  rules 
tend  to  the  deterioration  of  the  character  of  the  indi- 
vidual workman.  Not  all  American  workmen  like  to 


THE     PUBLIC     REFUSES     TO     PAY  89 

take  "big  money"  for  work  not  done;  they  like  to  feel 
that  they  have  earned  what  they  receive.  Once  in  the 
union  they  are  helpless;  they  must  abide  by  the  rules 
and  obey  the  leaders.  The  best  thing  these  leaders  can 
do  is  to  talk  less  about  "rights"  that  no  one  denies  and 
look  about  for  ways  of  increasing  production  and  stimulat- 
ing efficiency.  If  labor  dislikes  the  public's  opinion  of  its 
present  practices  it  has  only  itself  to  blame.  Once 
owners  and  employers  and  the  people  in  general  see  the 
rank  and  file  of  the  union  workers  really  getting  on  the 
job  there  will  be  no  trouble  in  agreeing  on  a  wage  scale. 


SOME  MARSHALL  JONES  BOOKS 

FURNITURE  OF  THE  PILGRIM  CENTURY 
By  Wallace  Nutting 

In  this  tercentenary  year  the  publication  of  Mr.  Nutting's 
remarkable  collection  of  photographs  of  colonial  furniture  is  most 
appropriate  and  significant.  It  is  the  result  of  years  of  work  by  a 
man  whose  name  stamps  it  with  authority.  American  furniture, 
of  native  woods,  of  our  first  century  is  the  theme.  A  thousand 
pictures  with  descriptions  beautifully  printed  on  cameo  paper  make 
a  book  that  no  collector  or  important  library  can  ignore. 

We  expect  to  publish  it  on  September  15.  Enter  your  order  now, 
state  the  date  you  wish  it  filled  and  we  will  give  it  careful  attention. 
It  will  solve  one  Christmas  problem. 

Price,  $15.00 


A  DAY  IN  A   COLONIAL  HOME 
By  Delia  R.  Prescott 
Edited  by  John  Cotton  Dana 

Teachers  and  parents  frequently  asked  the  Newark  Public  Library 
how  they  could  make  their  children  have  a  better  appreciation  of 
the  home.  So  they  built  an  old-fashioned  kitchen  with  its  fire 
place,  furnished  it  and  reproduced  its  daily  life  with  the  assistance 
of  Normal  School  girls.  The  exhibit  was  witnessed  by  many 
thousand  interested  children.  Then  this  little  book  was  written, 
illustrated  and  published,  that  others  may  see  how  happy  and  whole- 
some lives  were  lived  when  each  member  of  the  household  con- 
tributed to  the  family  welfare.  It  is  an  excellent  book  for  children 
whether  of  native  or  adopted  Americans. 

Ready  in  June. 

Price,  $1.25 


CROOKED   AND   NARROW   STREETS   OF   THE   TOWN    OF 

BOSTON   1630-1822 
By  Annie  Haven  Thwing 

The  origin  of  this  book  was  due  to  the  author's  attempt,  many 
years  ago,  to  find  out  where  her  ancestors  lived,  who  their  neighbors 
were  and  what  their  neighborhood  was  like.  The  collecting  of  this 
material  was  spread  over  a  period  of  thirty  years.  It  contains 
records  of  the  streets  and  people,  events  and  anecdotes — material 
of  great  interest  to  all  who  would  know  their  Boston.  There  are 
seven  double  page  specially  drawn  maps,  twenty-four  full  page 
illustrations  and  a  comprehensive  index. 

Price,  $5.00 
90 


TURNPIKES  OF  NEW  ENGLAND,  THE 
By  Frederic  J.  Wood 

An  exhaustive,  authoritative,  and  human  treatise  on  the  subject 
upon  which  there  is  little  material  elsewhere  available,  containing 
nearly  four  hundred  illustrations,  maps,  and  charts  and  an  index 
of  nearly  four  thousand  entries.  It  appeals  to  the  engineer,  the 
economist,  the  historian,  the  automobilist,  and  the  general  reader. 
Bound  in  heavy  library  buckram,  with  decorations  in  gold. 

A  monumental  work  in  a  new  field,  a  work  as  unique  as  it  is 
exhaustive — Boston  Herald. 

Price,  $10.00 

HISTORIC  TREES   OF  MASSACHUSETTS 

By  James  Raymond  Simmons,  formerly  Assistant  State  Forester, 

Massachusetts;  now  Secretary  and  Treasurer,  New  York  Forestry 

Association 

Trees  have  ever  been  connected  with  human  history.  Historic 
trees  are  those  beneath  or  near  which  events  of  continuing  interest 
in  the  life  of  State  or  Nation  have  occurred.  Massachusetts  has 
more  of  them  than  any  other  State  in  the  Union.  Some  of  them 
were  standing  before  the  Pilgrims  landed,  and  still  survive.  Mr. 
Simmons  describes  them  all,  and  shows  most  of  them  in  the  photo- 
graphs that  illustrate  the  book.  There  is  a  map  with  the  help  of 
which  automobile  tourists  may  visit  these  historic  sights  in  order. 
The  volume  has  special  interest  and  value  in  connection  with  the 
Plymouth  Tercentenary  Exposition. 

Price,  $4-00 

PARTIES  AND  PARTY  LEADERS 

By  Anson  Daniel  Morse,  late  Professor  of  History  in  Amherst 

College,  with  an  Introduction  by  Dwight  Whitney  Morrow 

A  collection  of  the  best  political  essays  of  a  singularly  clear- 
minded  and  unbiased  analyst  of  American  institutions.  Hitherto 
scattered  in  various  periodicals,  these  papers  are  now  brought 
together  into  a  volume  which  covers,  in  a  notably  clear  and  impartial 
way,  the  history  of  our  politics  down  to  1914. 

Ready  in  June. 

Price,  $3.00 

THE  NEMESIS  OF  MEDIOCRITY 
WALLED  TOWNS 

In  the  first  of  these  two  books  Mr.  Ralph  Adams  Cram  has  shown 
the  weakness  of  the  world  in  competent  leadership.  He  says, 
"Men  and  nations  have  been  what  they  have  been,  either  for  good 
or  evil,  not  by  the  will  of  a  numerical  majority,  but  by  the  supreme 
leadership  of  the  few — seers,  prophets,  captains  of  men;  and  so 
it  always  will  be." 

In  the  second  book  he  suggests  "the  way  out"  of  the  present 
confusion  that  has  overtaken  modern  civilization. 

They  are  suggestive  and  have  provoked  much  discussion. 

NEMESIS   OF   MEDIOCRITY Price,  $1.S5 

WALLED   TOWNS Price,  $1.50 

91 


THE   JOKE  ABOUT  HOUSING 

By  Charles  Harris  Whitaker,  Editor  of  the  Journal  of  the  American 
Institute  of  Architects 

It  must  be  admitted  that  the  title  of  this  book  isn't  indicative  of 
its  contents  for  it  is  one  of  the  most  fundamental  and  serious  dis- 
cussions of  this  all-important  subject  that  has  been  printed  thus  far. 
Mr.  Whitaker  speaks  without  fear,  without  prejudice,  without 
despite  of  the  rich  or  rnaudling  sympathy  for  the  poor,  but  he  hides 
nothing. 

Price,  $2.00 

LIBERTY  AND  DEMOCRACY 

By  Hartley  Burr  Alexander,  Professor  of  Philosophy,  the  University 

of  Nebraska 

The  volume  portrays  the  ideals  of  American  institutions  in  con- 
trast with  Prussianism.  Though  written  as  war-time  essays,  its 
significance  is  limited  to  no  one  period  of  our  history,  as  long  as 
liberty  and  democracy  mean  anything  to  us  and  our  faith  is  in  them. 
The  author  is  a  distinguished  scholar  and  a  frequent  contributor 
to  our  leading  magazines  and  journals. 
Price,  $1.75 

BILINGUAL  SERIES  FOR  NEW  AMERICANS 

The  Massachusetts  Society  of  Colonial  Dames  at  the  suggestion 
of  the  Massachusetts  Free  Library  Commission  has  undertaken  the 
publication  of  a  aeries  of  volumes  on  American  history,  biography 
and  ideals  which  shall  contribute  to  a  better  understanding  between 
the  new  Americans  and  the  old.  The  first  volume  (described  below), 
was  published  in  1929  and  met  with  favor.  A  new  edition  will  be 
published  shortly  edited  by  Charles  Hall  Grandgent  of  Harvard 
University  and  will  be  greatly  improved.  It  will  probably  be 
illustrated  and  contain  maps. 

THE  STORY  OF  AMERICA,  in     Italian     and     English. 

By  Alberto  Pecorini $1.00 

THE  STORY  OF  AMERICA,  in  Polish  and  English.    In 

preparation.    By  Alberto  Pecorini $1.00 

THE  STORY  OF  AMERICA,  in  English. 

By  Alberto  Pecorini Probable  price       .60 

THE  MEANING  OF  ARCHITECTURE,  an  Essay  in  Constructive 

Criticism 

By  Irving  K.  Pond 

Being  the  study  of  an  abiding  principle  and  an  analysis  of  the 
forms  of  its  manifestation  in  the  life  and  architecture  of  the  past — 
an  application  of  the  principle  in  the  expression  of  present  day 
ideals — and  a  statement  of  the  individual's  responsibility  in  the 
developing  art  of  a  democracy. 

Colored  frontispiece  and  thirty-seven  drawings  by  the  author. 
Price,  $2.85 

MARSHALL  JONES  COMPANY 

SUMMER  STREET  BOSTON,  MASS. 

92 


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25Aug'49HJ 


IN 


D 

jAN  2  9  '65  -4PM 


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RECCIfic     kK  13 1993 


LD  21-50m-8,-32 


Binder 
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Makers 
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572520 


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